Wednesday, 21st January 2026: London-based arts non-profit The Arts Family (TAF) will mark its continued presence at India Art Fair 2026 with a curated presentation in the fair’s Institutional Section. The showcase will feature award-winning contemporary artists from the latest edition of the TAF Emerging Artist Award – South Asia 2025.

Platform Supporting South Asian Contemporary Voices

TAF has rapidly established itself as a platform committed to supporting emerging and mid-career contemporary artists and art professionals from South Asia. Through its flagship Emerging Artist Award, alongside talks, exhibitions, and residencies, the organisation fosters international exposure, critical dialogue, and long-term professional development for artists working across the region.

Award-Winning Artists at India Art Fair 2026

At India Art Fair 2026, TAF will present works by the winners of the TAF Emerging Artist Award – South Asia 2025. The participating artists include Deena Pindoria (1st winner), Ritika Sharma (2nd winner), Akshay Bhoan (2nd winner), Mohit Shelare (3rd winner), and Deshna Shah (Special Mention).

Spotlight on Deena Pindoria and Deshna Shah

Among the featured artists is Deena Pindoria, a textile-based artist from Kutch and the first winner of the TAF Award 2025. Also included is Deshna Shah (UK), recipient of the Young Artist Award, who will go on to present a solo exhibition at Nature Morte in April 2026. The presentation underscores TAF’s commitment to providing institutional visibility and sustained professional opportunities for artists.

International Jury and Founder’s Perspective

The selected artists were chosen by an international jury from nearly 1,000 submissions. Speaking about TAF’s participation, Neha Jaiswal, Founder of The Arts Family, noted that the organisation is delighted to return to India Art Fair and continue building international visibility for South Asian artists through meaningful connections and long-term support structures.

Institutional Presence at NSIC Grounds

India Art Fair 2026 will take place from 5th to 8th February 2026 at the NSIC Exhibition Grounds, New Delhi. TAF’s presentation will be located at Booth M-04 within the Institutional Section, offering fair visitors insight into some of the most promising contemporary practices emerging from South Asia.

Exhibition Details

Takeaway

With its return to India Art Fair 2026, The Arts Family continues to strengthen its role as a key supporter of South Asian contemporary art. By presenting award-winning artists within an institutional framework, TAF reinforces its mission of fostering visibility, dialogue, and long-term growth for emerging voices on an international stage.

Three Contemporary Practices Come Together in Delhi

A compelling mix of sculpture and painting will be presented at India Art Fair 2026, bringing together three distinct contemporary artistic practices by Sandilya Theuerkauf, Meenal Singh, and Janarthanan Rudhramoorthy. The showcase will be presented by KYNKYNY Art Gallery at Booth No. L 08, from February 5 to 8, 2026, at the NSIC Exhibition Grounds, New Delhi.

Material as an Active Force in Meaning-Making

The presentation foregrounds material and process as central to artistic expression. Moving across sculpture and painting, the works explore how substance, transformation, and material intelligence shape meaning—positioning material not as a passive medium, but as an active collaborator in contemporary practice.

Sandilya Theuerkauf: Sculpture Rooted in Ecology

Sandilya Theuerkauf will present sculptural and relief works created from found plant-based materials. Rooted in ecology and forest conservation, his practice involves collecting fallen vegetal matter during daily walks and crafting each work from a single plant species. Adapting technique to the physical qualities of each material, his compositions reflect a delicate balance between human intervention and organic form, fostering a deeper environmental awareness.

Meenal Singh: Fluid Pigment and Immersive Painting

Meenal Singh will showcase large-format oil-on-canvas paintings driven by the fluid behaviour of liquid pigment. Working without brushes or direct contact with the surface, she employs experimental, process-led techniques to create expansive, abstracted landscapes. Colour, motion, and materiality guide the viewer through immersive and contemplative visual spaces.

Janarthanan Rudhramoorthy: Metal, Body, and Presence

Janarthanan Rudhramoorthy will present iron and steel sculptures that explore the relationship between the human body and inner consciousness. Inspired by the layered structures of bird nests, his works transform dense materials into forms that evoke presence and absence, impermanence, and transformation—challenging perceptions of weight, solidity, and spatial balance.

A Curated Presentation by KYNKYNY Art Gallery

Together, the works highlight how material choice and process shape contemporary artistic language. Curated and presented by KYNKYNY Art Gallery, the showcase reflects the gallery’s long-standing engagement with practices that explore unconventional materials, ecological awareness, and conceptual depth within India’s evolving contemporary art landscape.

Exhibition Details

Conclusion

Through sculpture and painting, this curated presentation at India Art Fair 2026 underscores the power of material-led inquiry in contemporary art. By bringing together practices rooted in ecology, process, and spatial consciousness, the showcase invites audiences to reconsider how material, method, and meaning intersect in shaping artistic expression today.

An Immersive Presentation at The Chanakya

Renowned artist Thota Vaikuntam presents an immersive showcase of his iconic Telangana figures at The Chanakya Imagine Atelier 2026, New Delhi, on 21st and 22nd January, 2026. The presentation explores identity, materiality, and cultural memory through a striking reimagining of his visual language across embroidery, bronze, and sculptural forms.

Reimagining Painting Through Embroidery

In a rare and intricate collaboration between painting and craft, Vaikuntam’s signature figures find new expression through silk and zardozi embroidery. Translated onto velvet surfaces, his distinctive colours, symbols, and forms are rendered using fine silk threads and embellished with precious and semi-precious gemstones. This material shift brings tactile depth to his visual narratives, expanding their emotional and sensory resonance.

Bronze Sculptures and Quiet Strength

Moving seamlessly between two and three dimensions, Vaikuntam’s bronze works introduce his recognisable figures into sculptural form while retaining their symbolic intensity. His bronze heads of men and women convey stillness and inner strength, animated by subtle accents of colour against dark bronze surfaces. The balance between stylised abstraction and natural detail lends these works both vitality and composure.

“The Sacred Gaze” in Monumental Form

Rendered in resinated fibreglass with automotive paint, The Sacred Gaze pays homage to the Telangana woman. These sculptural heads are not conventional portraits, but distilled embodiments of identity, memory, and belonging. Monumental in scale, the works merge the contemporary with the traditional, and the spiritual with the everyday—asserting presence through form, gaze, and colour.

Presented by Black Cube Gallery

The presentation is brought to New Delhi by Black Cube Gallery as part of The Chanakya Imagine Atelier 2026, held at The Chanakya. Across material transitions—from embroidery and bronze to sculptural forms—the exhibition highlights Vaikuntam’s enduring engagement with the people and spirit of Telangana.

Tradition Rearticulated Through Contemporary Expression

Together, the works reflect how Vaikuntam’s visual language continues to evolve through material experimentation. Moving fluidly between craft, sculpture, and monumental form, the presentation offers a contemplative encounter with cultural continuity—where tradition is not preserved as static history, but reimagined through contemporary expression.

Exhibition Details

Takeaway

By translating his iconic Telangana figures across diverse material forms, Thota Vaikuntam reaffirms his deep engagement with identity and cultural memory. The presentation at The Chanakya Imagine Atelier 2026 offers a nuanced dialogue between tradition and innovation-where craft, sculpture, and contemporary expression converge to keep cultural narratives alive and evolving.

National, 20 January 2026: Method, Delhi, presents RITES, a solo exhibition by Berlin– and New York–based artist and technologist Alida Sun, on view from 31 January to 15 March 2026. The exhibition brings together code, ritual, embroidery, mirrorwork, computational heritage, care, and solidarity-positioning technology as a site of resistance, intimacy, and collective imagination.

Exhibition at a Glance

Technology as Ritual and Resistance

At the heart of RITES is Sun’s daily coding practice, sustained over 2,343 consecutive days and counting, where repetition becomes ritual and curiosity becomes a form of refusal. Through custom-built software systems, Sun reframes computation as a generative and communal act, offering an alternative to extractive models of Big Tech by foregrounding care, protection, and shared authorship.

Reclaiming Feminist Computational Histories

The exhibition draws attention to a frequently erased history—that women were the first computers and pioneers of software engineering, at a time when software was dismissed as feminised and secondary labour. RITES emerges from an urgent need to reclaim this computational heritage, restoring technology as a tool for creation and liberation rather than militarisation and surveillance.

Code Translated into Tapestry

Hand-coded and hand-embroidered, the works in RITES are produced through collaboration with a community of women artisans at SSMI, translating computational logic into richly textured tapestries. These works position coding as a practice of solidarity—supporting livelihoods while sustaining cultural knowledge and craft traditions. Embedded mirrorwork, rooted in histories of spiritual protection, extends this language of care into the visual and interactive dimensions of the exhibition.

Human-Machine Portraits and Protective Encryption

Each tapestry is generated through Sun’s bodily movement, captured via infrared light and translated into code as both signature and sigil. Every RITE becomes an abstracted human–machine portrait—functioning as dazzle camouflage and protective encryption in an age shaped by algorithmic surveillance.

Opening Night and Public Programme

The exhibition opens on 31 January 2026 at Method Delhi, with an evening hosted by Sanjana Rishi and Ruchika Sachdeva. The opening programme includes a presentation by Alida Sun, where she frames code as a living, multi-sensory medium that moves between sound, light, textiles, bodies, and space-privileging process over outcome and embracing glitches as sites of generative discovery.

Live-Coded Performance by Abhinay Khoparzi

The opening night will conclude with a live-coded audio-visual performance by Abhinay Khoparzi. Responding directly to the exhibition, Khoparzi’s improvisational soundscapes are generated in real time through algorithmic processes. His performance echoes RITES’ themes of ritual, encryption, camouflage, and resistance—positioning code as a shared space for contemplation, solidarity, and experimentation.

India Art Fair Parallel Presentation

 

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RITES is an official India Art Fair Parallel. Works by Alida Sun will also be presented at Method’s booth (E10) at the India Art Fair, scheduled from 5 to 8 February 2026, extending the exhibition’s dialogue into a wider international platform.