A sure sign that the Indian art world had finally emerged from its Covid cocoon was the staging of the India Art Fair, on schedule, in February 2023. Attracting 85 exhibitors, the fair nudged New Delhi’s galleries to mount a slew of noteworthy exhibitions at their own premises. Making up for two years of doom and gloom, there was a notable air of celebration at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), which hosted “Pop South Asia: Artistic Explorations in the Popular.” Curated by artist Iftikhar Dadi and KNMA’s Roobina Karode, this large-scale exhibition highlighted pop art in the region by bringing together works by artists from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, from the sharply satirical installation Happy New Year (2013) by Anant Joshi, to Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran’s ceramic sculptures of quirky faces.

Pop culture also spilled into Chitra Ganesh’s exhibition “Orchid Meditations” at Gallery Espace, with Ganesh’s trademark use of Amar Chitra Katha, a popular Indian comic that depicts the subcontinent’s mythologies and historical tales. In her solo at one of Vadehra Art Gallery’s spaces, “Meeting,” octogenarian Arpita Singh married text and image in densely wrought paintings. In some of her more poignant works, such as The Swans Did Not Come Back This Year (2022) and Star, Moon and Two Different Skies (2022), one could sense her move away from an anthropomorphic view of the world and her desire for a change in the work If You Only Let Me (2023). Meanwhile, popular culture, albeit from a different era, reappeared in “The Babu and the Bazaar” at DAG. Curated by historian and scholar Aditi Nath Sarkar, the exhibition traced Calcutta’s history, culture, and class distinctions through paintings from 19th- and early 20th-century Bengal. One of the key revelations was the “erotic art” of the Sundari paintings featuring “pin-up girls.” In reality, the female subjects were widows who had turned to prostitution to make ends meet.