Delhi Contemporary Art Week Is Back With Its 6th Edition

The 6th edition of Delhi Contemporary Art Week (DCAW) will highlight works by fresh new voices from South Asia in a variety of mediums from six participating galleries: Blueprint12, Exhibit 320, Gallery Espace, Latitude 28, Shrine Empire, and Vadehra Art Gallery.

Just like its successful edition last year, this year, the Delhi Contemporary Art Week (DCAW) will be at Bikaner House and open to the public for five days.

The participating galleries have consistently promoted contemporary art and are committed to coming together to educate, showcase and promote the same. All of them, coincidentally, are helmed by women.

In addition to a kaleidoscope of styles, ideas, and techniques that reflect the dynamic tapestry of South Asian creativity, this edition of DCAW will feature exciting new voices.

The Line-Up At The 2023 DCAW

Apart from the curated shows by six participating galleries, there will be a group exhibition featuring artists from each gallery.

Blueprint12

Blueprint12 presents Avantika Bawa, whose practice emphasises the intersections where drawing and sculpture, stasis and motion, and functional and non-functional intermingle. Other works of selected artists will include Ashfika Rahman, Lochan Upadhyay, Nidhi Khurana, and Shashank Peshawaria.

Exhibit 320

Exhibit 320 will showcase new media and its structures as a place for creative endeavour, aesthetic exploration and furthering visual dialogue. The artists will include new artists Wahida Ahmed and Deepak Kumar. Along with them, the gallery will be exhibiting works by other artists, including Deena Pindoria, Jayati Kaushik, Kumaresan Selvaraj, and Yasmin Jahan Nupur.

"At DCAW this year, we will be showcasing some new faces. One of them is Wahida Ahmed. Her body of work uses jacquard as a trope to examine the socio-political fabric of Assam. The precarity engendered by the complex interaction of warring identities, capitalist encroachments vote bank politics, and the caprices of the Brahmaputra echoes in the composite and layered aspects of her works," said Rasika Kajaria, director, Exhibit 320.

Gallery Espace is showcasing the works of 10 contemporary textile artists from across India whose practices explore the myriad possibilities of fibre and yarn as art mediums. They will present the artworks of Gopika Nath and Devi Seetharam. Gopika is a textile designer and fibre artist who knits, crochets and embroiders to create intricate pieces inspired by the sea and coast of Goa where she lives. Gleaming white mundus–the white sarong traditional male attire in Kerala–dominates Devi Seetharaman’s large compositions, depicting groups of men standing together casually in public spaces.

Latitude 28

Latitude 28 will be showing the works of Pakistani visual artist Farhat Ali for the first time in India. Based out of Badin, Sindh, Farhat’s practice primarily focuses on reinterpreting history and popular imagery. Alongside Farhat, the highlights of this year are artists Shubham Kumar, Aninda Singh and Manjot Kaur. While Singh is a contemporary ceramic artist whose practice is visual and metaphoric, commenting on our interconnectedness to all beings, Kaur’s “Polymorphous Seeds” blends myth and nature to question power and agency.

The gallery will also be presenting in this edition the watercolours of veteran artist Jahangir Asgar Jani, Manjot Kaur’s intricate paintings exploring the hybrid forms of identities through amalgamation of mythological and natural beings and Khadim Ali’s largest tapestry to date exploring the current situation of his native city Kabul affected by global geopolitics.

Shrine Empire

The gallery is focused on showing strong voices from the South Asian region whose works address contemporary concerns. There will be works of Arun Dev for the first time. The works of the Resting Museum (Priyanka D Souza and Shreyasi Pathak) will also be on display for the first time. Another highlight is the diversity of materials and mediums on display, from sculptures to installations, drawings and paintings.

Vadehra Art Gallery

The gallery will present for the first time in India works by an exciting young South Asian diasporic artist, Zaam Arif, and an important body of work by another young artist, Treibor Mawlong, that was recently on display at the Kochi–Muziris Biennale (2022). Also on display will be works on canvas by Sujith S.N. for the first time, a much-coveted neon sculpture by Shilpa Gupta; a continuation of sculptural works by Jagannath Panda and two special, large-scale sets of 20 works each by Shailesh B.R.

This edition will also feature works of Atul Bhalla, Atul Dodiya, Faiza Butt, Gigi Scaria, K.M. Madhusudhanan, N.S. Harsha, Praneet Soi, Ranbir Kaleka, Sachin George Sebastian, Shrimanti Saha, Sudhir Patwardhan, Pranati Panda, and Anju Dodiya.

Conjunction Of The Spheres

This year, Girish Shahane has curated the exhibit titled ‘Conjunction of the Spheres’ featuring works of 18 artists.

The exhibition’s curatorial framework bases itself on the vision of the cosmos articulated by the cultures of ancient Mesopotamia, a land that in its broadest definition, includes modern-day Iraq and bits of Syria, Iran, and Turkey. In any long-lived belief system, whether Mesopotamian, Indian or Egyptian, the place of gods shifts in importance over the centuries, as do their traits and powers.

“The choice of the theme was made because it is capacious enough to accommodate a wide variety of practices, as demanded of a show that is a collaboration between six galleries with disparate programmes, while also being cohesive enough to bring varied artistic styles together into a unified visual experience,” said Shahane.

Apart from this collective exhibition, the six partner galleries will also present curated exhibitions at their respective spaces, igniting a citywide excitement centred around contemporary art.

The festival’s enriching programming comprises curatorial walk-throughs and a two-day symposium.

TAKE on Art is organising the TAKE Symposium, ‘Horizon and Perspective: Curatorial Gaze to Gauge Promise of Art’ on September 4 and 5. Conceptualised by Bhavna Kakar and Dilpreet Bhullar, the symposium delves deeper into the use of archival excavation to reimagine the past, explores the concept of establishing a new world order, emphasises the significance of curatorial collaborations, and discusses community building alongside a radical approach to viewing art.

Hannah Mathews, Senior Curator at Monash University Museum of Art, will deliver the keynote address. Other prominent speakers are Abha Narain Lambha, John Tain, Mirjam Varadinis, Naman Ahuja, Pushpamala N, Tasneem Zakaria Mehta, and more.

The Information

When: September 3 to 7, 2023

Venue: Bikaner House, New Delhi

Participating galleries: Blueprint12 / Exhibit 320/ Gallery Espace / Latitude 28 / Shrine Empire / Vadehra Art Gallery

Instagram: @delhicontemporaryartweek