Highlights From India Art Fair 2018
By Ned Carter Miles
KS RADHAKRISHNAN’s Musui on the Ladder (2016) provides an attention grabbing centerpiece at the booth of Nvya Gallery (New Delhi) at the India Art Fair 2018. All photos by Ned Carter Miles for ArtAsiaPacific.
Having attracted 6,000 visitors for its inauguration in 2008 under the name “India Art Summit,” India Art Fair (IAF) is now the largest event of its kind in the country—welcoming over 90,000 visitors in 2017. With 78 exhibitors in the latest edition—up from 72 last year—it looked promising by the end of the fair’s opening day that a healthy number of people from a variety of backgrounds would attend the first IAF under new director Jagdip Jagpal, whose résumé and socially conscious approach make it a safe bet that she is the person for the strategic development that will lead the fair into the future. Having previously worked on projects in South Asia, Africa and the United Kingdom, managed international partnerships and programs at Tate, and as governor of the London School of Economics and a development board member of the Royal College of Art, Jagpal’s objective is to expand IAF’s program and expose the best examples of the regional art scene to a wider audience. This year’s presentation was reportedly a more polished affair than previous editions, and benefitted from Jagpal’s insistence that galleries respect visitors and bring fresh works, rather than those they have been unable to sell elsewhere.
