Art fairs are an assault on the senses in the best possible way. For a few charged days, galleries from across the spectrum converge, turning the fair into a visual spectacle that briefly commandeers the hearts and minds of the creatively inclined.
Yet beyond the scale and the din lies the deeper pleasure of discovering the elusive new artist, a fresh voice, an unexpected gallery quietly holding its ground. The unchampioned sits shoulder to shoulder with the needlessly hyped, bound together by that peculiar adhesive of commerce and creativity. Within these immaculate white walls, the choreography of deal making is so astute it could offer even Trump and his strategists a masterclass in the politics of persuasion.
Against this excess and intensity, these are the ten works that stayed with me (in no particular order) from India Art Fair 2026.
1. Haal Mukaam: Current Address
Artist: Girjesh Kumar Singh
Gallery: Rukshaan Art
Singh’s solo exhibition engages with the idea that no address is permanent. This impermanence is embedded in his material of choice: Bricks salvaged from demolished constructions. The figures in Singh’s works are never idle—they’re waiting, with a readiness to depart.
2. The Weavers
Artist: Arthur William Devis
Gallery: DAG
Devis spent around a decade in India, securing a number of significant portrait commissions. In 1792, he found particularly rich subject matter in Santipur, a major centre of the Bengal muslin industry. The Weaver, one of twenty-six paintings made during this period, depicts the interior of a weaver’s home in Santipur.
3. Untitled (2022)
Artist: Belgur Mandavi
Gallery: Ojas Art
Mandavi was a tribal mural artist from Garh Bengal, Narayanpur, in the Bastar division of Chhattisgarh. He was discovered by one of J Swaminathan’s scouting teams in the early 1980s and went to Bhopal three times to participate at painting workshops in Bharat Bhavan. But he returned to his village and went back to agriculture, rarely painting. He was rediscovered in the 2020s.
Also read: Don’t miss these 10 works at the India Art Fair
4. Red Period. Blue Period
Artist: Marina Abramović
Gallery: Saatchi Yates
Abramović is perhaps the most famous performance artist working today. This exhibit re-imagines two of her iconic performance videos—‘Blue Period’ and ‘Red Period’—by transforming them into a series of photographic stills.
5. Scattered memories of a distorted future
Artist: Maryam Firuzi
Gallery: Vida Heydari Contemporary
The catalyst for Firuzi’s series was the fatal crash of a Ukrainian airplane in Tehran on 8 January 2020. In a bid to make sense of this collective agony, she turned to ruins. Firuzi invited female painters to paint what they like in abandoned places. The photographs of the sites make up the collection.
6. Burden
Artist: T Venkanna
Gallery: Abhay Maskara Gallery
Painted on a vast, cinematic scale, the 244 x 488 cm painting is a hallucinatory panorama where myth, sexuality, and violence intertwine. Venkanna’s composition questions agency and the historical burden of gendered representation.
Also read: Top 10 picks of Serendipity Art Festival 2025 by Rohit Chawla
7. ‘Better stronger faster’ ruins the tea (left) and Drone Magnet (right)
Artist: Moonis Ijlal
Gallery: Shrine Empire Gallery
Part of the series Lie Machine: Men and the Moon Do Not Care, the paintings depict men absorbed in moments of everyday leisure—watching reels, connecting through screens over cups of tea, coffee, and cigarettes. Above them, the skies are populated not only by the moon, but by missiles and drones, signalling an uneasy convergence of the everyday, and the militarised.
8. Reflections of the inner voice in solitude
Artist: Sharmi Chowdhury
Gallery: VEDA Gallery
The haunting sculpture is made from traditional Korean Hanji paper and housed in old wooden furniture from Kolkata. Chowdhury’s work enact human relationships. Though she works usually in oils on canvas, she has experimented in different media.
9. Altered Sentences
Artist: Manjunath Kamath
Gallery: Sakshi Gallery
Kamath sees history as fiction. Much like reconstructing historical events involves filling in the gaps, the artist’s works suggest absence and incompleteness. Terracotta has been the artist’s preferred medium for its paradoxical nature, the fragility of the material and yet its perseverance through history.
10. The Window
Artist: Sudhir Patwardhan
Gallery: Vadehra Art Gallery
Sudhir Patwardhan displays a profound empathy towards the human figure, including its mental distortions and physical vagaries. In The Window he quotes another master’s work—Philip Guston.
Rohit Chawla is an acclaimed photographer and artist. He is on Instagram @rohitchawlaphotography_. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)