Delhi Contemporary Art Week: 6 galleries, 2 exhibitions, and a wider view of the world
The ninth Delhi Contemporary Art Week arrives at Bikaner House, gathering six women‑run galleries—Blueprint12, Exhibit 320, Gallery Espace, Latitude 28, Shrine Empire and Vadehra Art Gallery—for a week‑long immersion in contemporary practice across India and South Asia.
Gallery Espace’s "Presenting Abundance" blends miniature traditions with abstraction, highlighting surface, colour and ornament through artists such as Waswo X Waswo and Shobha Broota. Blueprint12’s "Ways of Being Seen" turns the body into a site of queer visibility, displacement and grief, featuring works by JK, Nameera Irshad and others. Latitude 28’s "Meridian" gathers fourteen practices to interrogate inheritance, land and folklore. Shrine Empire presents a diverse roster that probes memory and landscape, while Exhibit 320 focuses on materiality and home through Barkha Gupta, Jaimini Jariwala and Maitreyi Desai. Vadehra’s "A Geography of Tender Things" offers an emotionally resonant look at place, with contributions from Anju Dodiya, Zaam Arif and Atul Dodiya.
Two curatorial projects extend the programme beyond the galleries. Adwait Singh’s "Bye‑Bye Monsoon" uses the 1978 Delhi tornado as a lens for climate disruption, while Annalisa Mansukhani’s "This Animate Earth" foregrounds plants, roots and soil as archives of labour, caste and empire. Both exhibitions weave ecological concern with personal and collective memory.
Organisers stress that DCAW is more than a market fair; it functions as a laboratory for dialogue, inviting audiences to linger with paintings, sculptures, textiles and archives without the pressure of commercial sales. The week’s emphasis on bodies, landscapes, archives and the everyday material world makes the event a vital meeting point for the city’s cultural fabric.