The Dhoomimal Gallery, India’s oldest modern art gallery, is set to host an intellectually thrilling exhibition, namely The Art of Ski(e)n: Re-membering through Performance and Thread. It will feature the works of two internationally trained artists from the Royal College of Art, London: Abhijna Vemuru Kasa and Insha Manzoor. It aims to dive deeper into the intersection of mind, body, and memory. The exhibition will run from December 6, 2025, to January 10, 2026, with a preview on December 5 at the gallery’s Connaught Place venue. The exhibition is curated by Jyoti A. Kathpali and offers an interplay between two totally distinctive methods of artistic practice.
Decoding Ski(e)n
The title, Ski(e)n, represents the skin as both a literal and metaphorical surface symbolizing a site of inscription for culture and history. And the skien is a length of thread or yarn, which is symbolic for a complex vector of memories. The art is displayed on a variety of media, such as photographs, textured textiles, etc., which reflect the emotional and psychological encounters of the artists with their ‘self’. The vivid materiality of the art also explores the threshold of time and space, symbolizing a niche where cultural memory and the unconscious mind actively engage in the act of creativity.
Abhijna Vemuru Kasa
Artist Abhijna Vemuru Kasa entails a fierce feminist POV in her art. Inspired by Indian and Persian narratives and local myths, her practice juxtaposes the norms that frequently essentialize women. She reinterprets stories through a feminist lens, which appear to be more authentic, real, and reflective of a woman’s actual lived experiences. Her work acknowledged the underacknowledged post-partum experience (the phase right after giving birth); her craft stresses a distinctive feminine subjectivity that is free from stereotypical and prejudiced constraints. Her media include performance, digital documentation, and painting on the skin, transforming surfaces into conduits for alternate imaginaries.
Insha Manzoor
Insha Manzoor is a multidisciplinary artist hailing from Kashmir and primarily engages with their traditional craft. Her artistic exploration emphasizes how crafts such as weaving and embroidery can act as anchors in an unstable world marked by unstable geopolitics, displacement, and immense trauma. She possesses the capability to use thread and fabric in a way that brings people closer to intergenerational memory, knowledge, and care. These craft acts as a bridge for conflict mediation and contribute to peace, one stitch at a time.
Both artists have varied leanings and different visual languages to display. However, the power they have invested and inculcated through their individual practice is utterly incredible. “This exhibition is a lot to do with the negotiation of the self and the gender-inscribed body, and of the self as a site of reconnaissance into the cultural motifs and craft, to recover connections between the individual and her fraught environment,” mentions Curator Kathpalia. The exhibition’s power lies in how these two distinctive voices “converge in their search for ways of re-inscribing the self in the world by attempting to visualise parity through skin and skein.”
Exhibition details
| Event | Details |
|---|---|
| Title | The Art of Ski(e)n: Re-membering through Performance and Thread |
| Artists | Abhijna Vemuru Kasa (Hyderabad/San Francisco) & Insha Manzoor (Kashmir) |
| Affiliation | Both are Alumni of the Royal College of Art (RCA), London. |
| Curator | Jyoti A. Kathpalia |
| Dates | 6 December 2025 – 10 January 2026 (Preview: 5 Dec 2025) |
| Venue | Dhoomimal Gallery, G-42 Connaught Place, New Delhi |
Key Highlights of the Exhibition
- A rare collaboration between two RCA alumni rooted in South Asian cultural memory.
- Exploration of skin and skein as metaphors for inscription, inheritance, and emotional resonance.
- Use of performance, digital documentation, immersive installations, and textile art.
- Feminist, decolonial, and trauma-informed artistic expressions.
- A rich variety of media: oils, acrylics, mixed media, wool, fabric, photography, installation art.
- Curatorial walks and artist talks are planned during the exhibition period.
- A focus on re-membering—literally stitching together fragments of identity, memory, and history.
Why Does This Exhibition Matter?
Abhijna’s art is meant for people to explore the unspoken emotions and terrains of womanhood, as she introduces a powerful urgency to her practice. Working between Hyderabad and San Francisco, she interrogates the restrictive cultural norms that essentialise women’s bodies and experiences. Through her mixed media presentations, the “skin” becomes more than a mere organ of the body. On the other hand, Insha’s skein embodies endurance and resilience.
Takeaway
The exhibition reasserts the importance of craft, memory, and the body as sites of political and personal meaning. By blending tradition with technology, they challenge the binaries between craft and contemporary art, between personal history and collective trauma, and between myth and lived experience. In a world shaped by displacement, digital fragmentation, and contested identities, this exhibition reminds us that memory, like a thread, can unfurl, and it can be rewoven with intention, tenderness, and resistance.
