The Imaginary Institution of India Art 1975–1998 The Barbican London

Source The Barbican
Featuring artwork by over 30 Indian artists, this major exhibition is bookended by two transformative events in India’s history: Indira Gandhi’s declaration of a state of emergency in 1975 and the Pokhran nuclear tests in 1998. The fraught period between these years was marked by social upheaval, economic collapse, and rapid urbanisation. Within this turbulence, ordinary life continued, and artists made work that distilled historically significant episodes as well as intimate moments and shared experiences. Across a range of media, the vivid, urgent works on show – about friendship, love, desire, family, religion, violence, caste, community, protest – are deeply personal documents from a period of tremendous change. This is the first institutional exhibition to cover these definitive years, with many works never before seen in the UK.
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Three iconic female Indian artists, born pre-independence, tell us how they broke into a male-dominated art landscape

Source Vogue India by Gautami Reddy
The four women—now venerated artists in their seventies and eighties—started their careers together in the 1970s during a period of intense change in India. Indira Gandhi had just declared a national emergency; a sharp spike in population had been reported; inflation was at a record high and student protests were breaking out all over the country. Despite this turmoil, or perhaps because of it, a new wave of feminist film, theatre and music emerged. Galvanised by this revolutionary spirit, Malani, Sheikh, Parekh and Singh spent the next decade breaking into India’s male-dominated art landscape. They commemorated their efforts with a series of all-women travelling exhibitions titled Through The Looking Glass in 1989.
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India Art Fair expands into Mumbai

Source Artforum
The India Art Fair, held annually since 2008 in New Delhi, has announced the launch next year of a novel iteration taking place in Mumbai. Focusing on art and design from South Asia, the new India Art Fair Contemporary will host between fifty and seventy Indian and international exhibitors at the city’s Jio World Garden from November 13 to November 16. The fair will additionally promote cross-disciplinary collaborations between art and design and will point up Mumbai’s history as a global port by featuring work from South Asia, Africa, and South America. The fair, like its New Delhi predecessor, is owned and operated by Angus Montgomery Arts (AMA), which runs regional art fairs including Hong Kong’s Art Central, Shanghai’s Photofairs, Taipei Dangdai, Sydney Contemporary, Singapore’s Art SG, and Yokohama’s Tokyo Gendai.

We don’t know Sosa Joseph’s girls

Source Stir World by Maanav Jalan
A naked woman lays prostrate across the diagonal of a large canvas by Kerala-born artist Sosa Joseph. The work, Śarada (2023-24), painted with Joseph’s characteristic fluidity and a more sensual palette is among the 14 on view across two floors at David Zwirner gallery in London, in her first European solo exhibition Pennungal: Lives of women and girls. In a talk at the gallery, Joseph explains that the title of the show, Pennungal, is a “not so respectful, dismissive way of addressing women in Malayalam,” her mother tongue, and a word that depending on the tone can connote something like, "oh women, useless creatures”.
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A pioneer of performance art in India reflects on her decades-long journey

Source Scroll In by Kamayani Sharma
Today, every major Indian art event, be it a biennial or a fair, features performance artworks in its programme. But despite the form’s contemporary boom, its history in India is still inchoate. As art historian Rakhee Balaram says in a 2022 essay, “The genesis of performance art in India, including the histories of the 1980s, has yet to be written…” One person who is all too familiar with this history is Ratnabali Kant, a pioneer of performance art and, as art historian Partha Mitter points out, the first Indian artist to synthesise performance and installation.
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100 years after his birth, Francis Newton Souza’s art is seeing the resurgence it deserves

Source Christie's
Francis Newton Souza’s story is marked by rebellion and determination. Souza, who was born in Goa, India in 1924, was expelled from school twice as a youth before ultimately deciding to become an artist. Opting to join the company of other radical artists and revolutionaries, he joined India’s Communist party in 1947 and co-founded the Progressive Artists’ Group (PAG). However, Souza quickly grew frustrated with the lack of patronage and aesthetic identity in India. Looking for acceptance, he left his native country in 1949 bound for London. For nearly two decades, Souza would remain in the English capital. It was during those years that, through challenge and hardship, the artist would define his career and cement his legacy as one of India’s most celebrated modern painters. In honour of the artist’s centenary, Christie’s is proud to present Francis Newton Souza: The London Years, Masterworks from the Collection of Navin Kumar, on view in our New York gallery from 13–18 September. Chronicling his time in London, the exhibition features 26 artworks from the groundbreaking years Souza spent in Europe.
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