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.