United Art Fair presents its second edition at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi. While continuing with their radically new model of an artist-driven fair (as opposed to a gallery-driven fair, as most in the world are), in its second edition the United Art Fair will continue to expand on the parameters of contemporary art by looking at a wider variety of disciplines, practitioners, media and materials. Paintings, sculpture and photography will continue to be the majority of works on display, but the fair will also include examples from all fields of design (including graphic art, fashion, textiles, furniture, and ceramics) to expand on how we define "art" today. By also accommodating works from the genres of folk and tribal art, crafts and ritual arts, the fair will expand on how we define "contemporary" in India today. Boundaries between these various genres and disciplines will be breached, with exciting combinations of materials on display to challenge their preconceived categories of artistic production.
Guiding the second edition of the UAF is the curator Peter Nagy, functioning as Artistic Director. Well known to the international art world as the founder and director of Nature Morte, with galleries in Delhi, Gurgaon and Berlin, Mr. Nagy brings 30 years of experience in the art world to the project. Working with him are a team of five curators that have been enlisted to aid Mr. Nagy in discovering artists and co-ordinating the exhibition. Dr. Alka Pande is a well-known art historian who has authored many prestigious publications and has been the Chief Curator of the Visual Arts Gallery at the Indian Habitat Centre in Delhi since 2000. Ram Rahman is a photographer, graphic designer, and founding member of the activist collective SAHMAT, and most recently organized a survey exhibition of twenty years of its history for the Smart Museum in Chicago. Meera Menezes is an independent critic and curator who has written for a wide variety of publications and organized exhibitions for many private galleries and public institutions. Heidi Fichtner is a curator and critic who has worked in New York, Paris and Berlin before coming to India where she operates in both the commercial and non-profit contexts. Mayank Kaul is a writer and curator who specializes in design and has organized exhibitions for the Khoj Artists Workshop and the Devi Art Foundation.
Asia’s biggest artists’ driven art fair, United Art Fair has several special features that make it distinct from other fair formats that the Indian art scene familiar with for the last few years. "While the galleries play a major role in participating in these fairs, United Art Fair creates an exclusive platform for artists from all over India and abroad. Our executives would create a conducive atmosphere for the buyers and collectors to meet the artists, discuss their aesthetics and buy the works at a very reasonable price” says Annurag Sharma, Founder & Director.
“We have taken a pan national approach and we would like to bring in the artists from the small towns and other cities so that they get a chance to exhibit their works before an international audience, along with other established artists from the urban centres,” says Vikash Kumar, noted Art Historian, Writer and Curator and the Associate Director of United Art Fair.
The fair will be organized into a variety of spaces to accommodate both group shows and solo shows of works by particular artists. While the emphasis will be on younger, undiscovered talent new to the marketplace and outside of the existing gallery system, senior artists whose works have been overlooked will also be exhibited. Through exhibition and installation strategies, dialogues between disciplines and generations will be created, visual excitement will take precedence over academic categorizations.
In addition, collaborative projects will be developed with a variety of arts organizations and companies, including Pro Helvetia, BestCollegeArt.com, and the Embassy of Israel in India.
