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The spectacle that is India Art Fair returns with a visionary 2026 edition featuring an exciting mix of modern and contemporary art, collectible design, carefully curated experiential outdoor projects, and a novel performance programme — alongside a dynamic Talks Programme featuring leading voices from across South Asia and beyond. These are a selected few showcases not to be missed.
Art Alive Gallery, Jayasri Burman
In the FOCUS section of the India Art Fair, a space dedicated to spotlighting established and globally renowned artists from South Asia, Art Alive Gallery brings together a solo feature of Jayasri Burman’s work titled Impermeable. The work takes precedence from Burman’s poetry collection Tumi, Maa (You, Mother), shaping as an immersive, multidisciplinary installation that reimagines the divine feminine through the lens of environmental awareness. Myth-inspired paintings interwoven with poetic text dissolve the divide between word and image to cultivate a greater sense of care and ecological empathy. The project invites reflection on the feminine as an elemental force by translating the word Maa into a three-dimensional form.
Art Alive Gallery, Paresh Maity
Within the sprawling urban landscape of India, natural elements and ecosystems are struggling to exist together. The Padma Shri awardee artist Paresh Maity brings these conversations to the forefront through Recycle of Life, a magnificent installation of 27 sculptures spread across 200 feet at the NSIC Grounds. The installation juxtaposes charred wood and recycled metal pipes to bring natural decay and environmental degradation in conversation with renewal and human invention. It introduces a new lexicon to coexist with natural material, where recycling alludes to the cyclical nature of life. The installation is supported by Art Alive Gallery.
Nature Morte, Bharti Kher
Bharti Kher returns to the India Art Fair with a stellar set of paintings following a twenty year hiatus from the medium. Kher’s foundational works were formatted as paintings during her early artistic training, although later having delved into and mastered a sculptural and installation-based practice. Anchoring this showcase at India Art Fair is Weather Painting: Point Zero (2025), a work of visceral force in which saturated reds, earthen hues, and orbital brushwork channel the dynamic energies long present in her sculptural practice. A group of accompanying sculptures expands this inquiry through spirals, coded geometries, and animist notions of living matter. Here, states of instability and constant movement are framed as conditions through which equilibrium is continually negotiated. This show is presented by Nature Morte.
Ghiora Aharoni Studio
The Design section of the exhibition invites extraordinary designers across the South Asian landscape to present a collection of their works at the India Art Fair. At the crux of this section, Ghiora Aharoni Studio’s presentation extends his deeply personal practice into an immersive installation centered on brass and gold, materials charged with spiritual and cultural significance. Reinterpreting ancient forms through a contemporary design language, the work brings together sculptural objects and symbolic scripts to explore memory and shared human experience. Positioned between craft and concept, the installation invites viewers into a contemplative space bridging tradition with artistic experimentation.
Villa Swagatam x Aequo, Marie Gastini
Marie Gastini’s practice is rooted in the emotional qualities of an object, how an object is conceived by a human—cherished belongings, inherited objects, discovered objects. Her work investigates how attachment materializes in matter, how intimacy settles into form, and how inanimate objects can retain the traces of lived experience. For India Art Fair 2026, this sensibility is refracted through a cross-cultural collaboration between Villa Swagatam, the French Institute in India’s cultural residency platform hosting Marie Gastini, and æquō, India’s first collectible design gallery. The resulting body of work from the residency unveils the continuation of these explorations through a series which will be exhibited at India Art Fair, offering a nuanced perspective on cross-cultural collaboration, authorship, and the evolving language of contemporary craft and design.
DMINTI, Judy Chicago
At India Art Fair 2026, Judy Chicago’s seminal project What If Women Ruled the World? will make its India debut as a participatory outdoor installation presented by DMINTI. The work, reimagined in 2022 as a physical and digital quilt, transforms the tradition of quilt-making through the reuse of fabrics into a powerful artistic medium that invites public engagement with a series of urgent questions about gender, society, and the future. Rooted in Chicago’s lifelong commitment to social and environmental justice, the evolving quilt draws on global contributions gathered over years of participatory responses and will be shown in an open-air setting where audiences can directly interact with and respond to its prompts.
KYNKYNY Art Gallery, Multiple Artists
KYNKYNY Art Gallery presents a tightly curated selection highlighting the diversity of contemporary Indian practice through the works of Sandilya Theuerkauf, Meenal Singh, and Janardhanan Rudhramoorthy. Together, their practices engage questions of materiality, process, and form, moving between abstraction and sculptural presence while remaining attentive to natural systems and bodily experience. The presentation reflects KYNKYNY’s long-standing commitment to artists whose work unfolds through sustained inquiry and material sensitivity, offering a nuanced, cross-disciplinary dialogue within the fair.
Galerie Maria Wettergren School, Dhruv Agarwal
Making its debut at India Art Fair 2026, Galerie Maria Wettergren joins the Design Section with a focused presentation that reflects the gallery’s commitment to contemporary art and design at the intersections of architecture, craft, and material experimentation. The gallery will present a solo showcase by award-winning designer Dhruv Agarwwal, whose work foregrounds collaboration, colour, and craft-led innovation. Central to the presentation is Agarwwal’s celebrated chandelier Bloom, developed in collaboration with Channapatna toy craftsmen, where vibrant wooden elements, concentric structures, and floral enamelled details bring traditional techniques into dialogue with contemporary design sensibilities. Together, the presentation highlights Agarwwal’s broader practice rooted in local artisanal knowledge while pushing toward new formal and material possibilities, positioning craft as a dynamic, evolving language within collectible design.
David Zwirner Gallery, Multiple Artists
At India Art Fair 2026, David Zwirner Gallery will bring together a remarkable lineup of international artists, with standout works by Huma Bhabha and Yayoi Kusama anchoring the presentation. Bhabha’s sculptural practice, marked by visceral, hybrid figures that fuse material experimentation with collective memory, will be on view alongside examples of Kusama’s iconic visual language, including works from her signature INFINITY-NETS and Pumpkin series. Complementing these, the gallery will also showcase works by a diverse group of artists including Michael Armitage, Marcel Dzama, Suzan Frecon, Sosa Joseph, Chris Ofili, Thomas Ruff, and Rose Wylie, offering a broad survey of contemporary painting, sculpture, and conceptual practice. This constellation of voices underscores David Zwirner’s commitment to presenting major international practices in New Delhi, providing fair visitors with a rich selection of works.
Rajiv Menon Contemporary, Multiple Artists
Rajiv Menon Contemporary makes its highly anticipated India Art Fair debut with a diasporic presentation that reflects the Los Angeles–based gallery’s mission to foreground contemporary art shaped by global circulation and cultural return. Founded in 2024 with a focus on artists from South Asia and its diasporas, the gallery has quickly gained recognition in the United States with museum placements and critical acclaim, and now brings this transnational programme to New Delhi. The booth brings together works by artists including Melissa Joseph, Sahana Ramakrishnan, Rajni Perera, Shyama Golden, Maya Seas, Devi Seetharam, Nibha Akireddy, Tarini Sethi, and the India debut of Gisela McDaniel. Across the presentation, colour is approached not merely as a visual device but as inheritance, friction, and a site of cultural negotiation, challenging public notions often imposed on South Asian art and opening space for layered, multifaceted expressions.
Amongst the plethora of works and experiences, chances and encounters, India Art Fair Parallel runs a compelling program including, but not limited to, the first-ever Defence Colony Gallery art night, a series of talks and pavilions at STIR x ADFF, murals and more at the Lodhi Arts District, preview of the new Aranyani Pavillion at Sunder Nursery, and the Young Collectors’ Program highlighting boundary-pushing practices of younger talent from the diaspora.
India Art Fair runs from 5th to 8th February, 2026 at NSIC Grounds, Okhla, New Delhi.
