The Gallery's booth F2 in Hall 2 will showcase works by artists including A Ramachandran, Anju Dodiya, Arpita Singh, Atul Bhalla, Atul Dodiya, Briana Blasko, Faiza Butt, FN Souza, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Jagannath Panda, Jitish Kallat, Juul Kraijer, Manjit Bawa, Nalani Malani, Paribartana Mohanty, Prajakta Palav Aher, Praneet Soi, Rakhi Peswani, Ram Kumar, Rameshwar Broota, Ruby Chishti, Tyeb Mehta, and Zakkir Hussain.

Like last year, the Gallery uses this opportunity to showcase the wide spectrum of artists that it works with. These range from senior modernists such as FN Souza, Tyeb Mehta and Ram Kumar to contemporary practitioners like Nalani Malani, Atul Dodiya and younger artists like Rakhi Peswani, Faiza Butt and Zakkir Hussain, among others. On display, thus, are works by more than four generations of artists and the charged dialogues taking place between them.

Conceptual artist Shilpa Gupta presents her new work Holy Waters. The work extends from earlier projects such as Blessed-Bandwidth.net, 2003, where Gupta investigates faith and religion in the real and virtual world. Here we are presented with four almost identical images of holy waters from revered rivers of Ganga and Jordan, and sacred places like Amritsar and Mecca, which very simply question the separation instigated by different religions.

Amidst a busy year exhibiting at Kochi Muziris Biennale and the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, and working towards his upcoming solo exhibition at Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati, Atul Dodiya exhibits his iconic shutter work at the fair. Titled Nirbhay, the work juxtaposes Gandhian legacy with contemporary reality, playing with the layers of the shutter and its underside. Other highlights include Nalani Malani’s works Murmur of Maternal Lamentations and And the Lotus Rose Quietly, which depict convoluted universes populated with therianthropes (half human half animal figures). Rakhi Peswani uses cloth, words and simple hand gestures to convey tactile sensations through a visual vocabulary in her series titled Abrasion and Erasure (On Labour), while Paribartana Mohanty will make his first appearance at the India Art Fair with a series of unorthodox portraits.

As in previous years, Vadehra Art Gallery at India Art Fair 2013 will continue to reach out to a large public and showcase milestones of Indian Art as well as promising contemporary artists from India and abroad.

Image: © Shilpa Gupta, Vadehra Art Gallery