In recent years, the Mumbai art scene has claimed the limelight in India, driven in large part by the efforts of commercial galleries in the country’s economic powerhouse. To kick off the new year, Mumbai Gallery Weekend runs from January 9–12 with more than 30 exhibitions held across leading commercial spaces and private museums. In addition to gallery shows, photographer Ram Rahman has curated an exhibition of Jyoti Bhatt’s black-and-white documentary images at Somaiya Vidyavihar University, and the Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation is presenting Dayanita Singh’s solo exhibition “Photo Lies.” Among other programs, on January 11, the former director of Art Basel Hong Kong, Adeline Ooi, moderates a conversation about Hong Kong’s museums and nonprofit spaces with the director of M+, Suhanya Raffel, nonprofit Para Site’s director, Billy Tang, and Ingrid Pui Yee Chu, associate curator at Tai Kwun Contemporary. Here’s a look at shows not to miss from AAP’s editors.

Jan 9​​–Feb 22
Christopher Kulendran Thomas
Exhale
Experimenter

Known for his explorations of generative AI, Berlin-based Christopher Kulendran Thomas’s first show in India casts doubts on the fluidity between human and machine processes, through translating computer-generated images to affective human strokes. His expressionistic paintings dive into Sri Lanka’s colonial past, challenging the myths of individual expression and freedom in Europe’s colonial project with questions on the identity and image formation in postcolonial South Asia.

Jan 9​​–Feb 22
Shailee Mehta
Chants from the hollow
Chemould CoLab

Created across three cities last year, Shailee Mehta’s works in “Chants from the hollow” manifest empathic encounters the artist had where body and land converge in tension and beauty. Through soft and varied gestures, the female body is the central subject in Mehta’s paintings, contemplating themes of self-reflection, care, and repair rooted in the female gaze, while searching for power in the collective.

Jan 9​​–Feb 28
Kausik Mukhopadhyay
And I Want To Travel Blind
Chatterjee & Lal

At once whimsical and unsettling, Indian artist Kausik Mukhopadhyay’s static and kinetic installations, made from repurposed electronics and household items, juxtapose playful elements with darker undercurrents. For his second solo show at Chatterjee & Lal, Mukhopadhyay’s monumental sculptures resemble ships and watchtowers—referencing the issues of surveillance ever more pressing in contemporary society, and reflected by the exhibition’s title, “And I Want to Travel Blind,” from the lyrics of Leonard Cohen’s acclaimed and haunting song, “Suzanne.”

Jan 9​​–Feb 22
Atul Dodiya
Radio Ceylon Paintings: Vol. 1
Chemould Prescott Road

A chronicler of India’s modern history, Atul Dodiya presents his solo show “Radio Ceylon Paintings: Vol 1” as if creating a citizens’ gallery, with a wide range of names, faces, and personalities appearing on his canvases. The exhibition honors stalwart musicians from Hindi Cinema’s Golden Age from late 1940s to ’60s, when the country underwent significant social and cultural transformation after gaining independence.

Jan 9​​–Feb 22
Rana Begum
Jhaveri Contemporary

Jhaveri Contemporary presents a solo exhibition by London-based Rana Begum, featuring a series of abstract, geometrical wall-based sculptures and gridded watercolor paintings that explore the interplay between light, color, form, and space. The opening work No. 974 (2019–20) comprises cast molds inspired by Turkish lamps, while new, iridescent aluminum plates from Begum’s Relief Panel series (2019– ) offer a visual meditation on perspective and time.

Jan 9​​–Feb 23
Parul Gupta
In Praise of Limits
Nature Morte

Deceptively simple at first glance, Parul Gupta’s work unfolds in complex and intensive perceptual experiences through time. Overlapping lines and layered, colorful squares evoke architectural spaces, transforming static exhibition space into dynamic entities. For “In Praise of Limits” Gupta draws from minimalist figures such as Rachel Whiteread, Robert Irwin, and Nasreen Mohamedi to explore the poetics of forms and space, and challenge the boundaries of vision itself.

Jan 9​​–Feb 28
Prajakta Potnis
Where should the birds fly after the last sky?
Project 88

Mumbai-based artist Prajakta Potnis excavates the uncanny from everyday domesticity, dwelling between the intimate universe of the individual and the outside world. Her solo exhibition “Where should the birds fly after the last sky?,” titled after Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s reflections on a shrinking world, features a series of paintings on slate stone that attempt to visualize intangible states such as trauma through careful interplays of medium, texture, and density. 

Jan 9​​–Feb 15
Soghra Khurasani
Grounded
TARQ

For her fourth solo show at Mumbai’s TARQ gallery, Vadodara-based artist Soghra Khurasani showcases a new range of woodcut and etching prints that reflect on the relationship between self and nature. Through a delicate synthesis of organic textures and forms such as grass, soil, water, and the human body, the exhibited works propound that in an increasingly fragmented world we remain interconnected and grounded to the same earth.

Jan 9–Feb 28
Aravani Art Project
ON THE CUSP OF THE EIGHTH DAY
Gallery XXL

Led by Bangalore-based artist Poornima Sukumar, Aravani Art Project is a collective of Indian trans- and cis-women aiming to foster awareness and support of LGBTQ+ communities through public art projects. Nine years since their establishment, the collective’s debut solo exhibition at Gallery XXL, “ON THE CUSP OF THE EIGHTH DAY,” presents work by Indian LGBTQ+ artists, celebrating their nuanced intersectional stories while emphasizing the social possibilities of artmaking and the conversations it enables. 

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