India Art Fair 2025: STIR brings you its list of must-visit booths
by Manu SharmaFeb 04, 2025
•make your fridays matter with a well-read weekend
by Samta NadeemPublished on : Jun 19, 2025
India and Pakistan gained their independence from the British in 1947, but what is more remarkable than the celebration of a contested freedom is the memory of an excruciating partition. I was born somewhere in the middle of our partitioned history to date, a little shy of half a century after the two nations declared freedom and yet The Radcliffe Line, clumsily and hastily drawn, seems to have sketched my most important and complex lessons in history, geography, identity, politics and pain – a condition not unique at all but personal to so many. Since secondary school, I have stared at the political map of our region to imagine who our neighbours would’ve been if South Asia were one alliance, how it would have redefined our relationships with major geopolitical forces like Russia, China or the West? To walk into an exhibition in the heart of London that erased all these lines, curatorially and metaphorically, was an experience I had to sit with.
(Un)Layering the future past of South Asia: Young artists' voices is an exhibition showcasing works by 26 contemporary artists from six of the eight South Asian countries – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The show is multi-media and interdisciplinary, spanning paintings, sculptures, textiles, photography, video works, installations and virtual reality storytelling. It explores themes such as ecological fragility, gender justice, displacement and political unrest. Co-curated by Pakistani artist and activist Salima Hashmi and UK-based Indian curator Manmeet K. Walia, this cross-border collaboration started as an exchange of personal experiences and cultural observations, turning into a wider survey through studio visits and conversations with the participating artists and finally manifesting as a major exhibition spread across three floors of the SOAS Gallery, formally known as the Brunei Gallery, in London. The intention was simple, explained Walia in a walkthrough with STIR. “We wanted this exhibition to be a reminder that the region’s histories aren’t isolated – they’re deeply entangled and those threads still shape how artists create today. It is also to celebrate the commonalities and pluralities of South Asia. What we see in their work are lived experiences they have on a daily basis in their country – leftovers of colonialism that echo across all six countries, forming a kind of shared language,” she said.
The two South Asian nations missing inclusion in this show, Bhutan and the Maldives, reflect the overall lack of support infrastructures for artistic practices missing in the region and weakest in these two nations. “Contemporary art in the Maldives and Bhutan is fledgling and hopefully in the next few years it will have matured. Bhutan, which is a highly constrained society, is strong in crafts, but an independent arts infrastructure does not exist. In the Maldives, there are no practising artists; those who practice are not based there anymore,” Hashmi said, from her experience of having taught students from both regions and having ties on the ground.
The exhibition features several new works made for the exhibition and ones never shown before in London. Together, they demonstrate the intensity and influence of personal and collective memories, storytelling and material culture in navigating the contemporary complexities and urgent challenges of South Asia and its diasporas. Screen Weaves ll (2024–2025) by artist Sher Ali is made in collaboration with women embroiderers in Kabul. Shaped like a translucent kheima, a tent made of soft net and embroidered with docile bugs and moths, lines and dots, it invites one to step inside, pulled towards a plate of salt kept on the carpeted floor. A 360-degree view of the piece delivers the shock of a target aimed at your head through the roof, indicative of being threatened and surveilled; the bugs now look like grenades and the dots become bullet holes.
An embroidered work by Varunika Saraf, The Longest Revolution II (2024), is suspended across from Screen Weaves ll, featuring tiny hand-embroidered figures based on the Wasli technique of Mughal miniature painting. These are women with protest slogans, posters and placards offering an empowered and united front resisting state oppression, as witnessed in recent years in India. I observed a solidarity between various protest movements driven by a range of marginalised communities – in their adoption of feminist philosophies as the only necessary condition for collective liberation.
Ashfika Rahman, winner of the Future Generation Art Prize 2024, collaborates with the indigenous Oraon community native to northern Bangladesh in the work Redeem (2021–22), which reflects on the lingering impact of mass religious conversion by travelling missionaries, enabled by colonial forces. The work on display is a map representing the coexistence of diverse religious communities, with each colour symbolising a different faith, made using material found in those villages. Deceptively, Redeem could pass for a soft, quilted tapestry in soothing pastel hues.
Pokhara-based visual and performance artist Amrit Karki’s art installation, Whisper (2021), comprising a long, tapering speaker in a dense electric blue, is affixed to a wall. You hear a murmur and go closer to listen. The exhortation to ‘Listen!’, recorded in a sequence of 50 different languages, plays in a continuous loop. The artist’s voice urges the audience to listen to what is being said, but the dizzying variety of languages creates mystery rather than comprehension.
Hadi Rahnaward lays down an archetypal rug from Afghanistan, stamped with a footprint and complete with burnt patches. Fragile Balance (2023) reveals the artist’s interest in cycles of violence, particularly the Taliban regime and the Soviet conflict of the 1980s. The artwork’s medium is surprising as it is apt and reveals itself through a close inspection of the rug’s frayed edges, made of matchsticks in red, some with burnt tips, that together constitute the ornate motifs of the region’s nomadic tribes.
“Bringing this into the UK was also about making space to see how these stories resonate here, to bridge that sense of distance and start seeing the overlaps in our decolonial journeys,” Walia said about the decision to launch the exhibition in London. Also featured in this exhibition are Indian artists Aban Raza, Dinar Sultana, Prarthna Singh, Purvai Rai, Sangita Maity and Soumya Sankar Bose; Pakistani artists Aiman Amin, Aisha Abid Hussain, Ghulam Mohammad, Maheen Kazim, Sajid Khan and Suleman Khilji; Afghani artists Hanifa Alizada and Kubra Khademi; Sri Lankan artists Pradeep Thalawatta, Hema Shironi, Rinoshan Susiman and T Vinoja; Bangladeshi artists Ayesha Sultana and Palash Bhattacharjee; and Kashmiri artist Moonis Ahmad. Between them, they span the disciplines of photography, photo-etching, video art, film, sound art, performance art, interactive art, multimedia art, paintings, sculpture and textile art.
Complete with a catalogue featuring essays by Natasha Ginwala, Iftikhar Dadi, Rahaab Allana and Dr Virginia Whiles alongside the two curators, this exhibition delivers on bringing South Asia together despite the interregional power struggles that persist and currently stand heightened. The curation is devoid of regional marking or thematics; it is hard to tell what story or which artist holds what passport. Their struggles carry nostalgia and colonial residue through conflicts (with man and nature) in the present, towards dreaming up futures that are resilient, inclusive and collective.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of STIR or its editors.
‘(Un)Layering the Future Past of South Asia: Young Artists’ Voices is on view from April 11 - June 21, 2025, at SOAS Gallery, London. The exhibition is supported by The Ravi Jain Memorial Foundation, established by Dhoomimal Gallery to promote young artists in India.
by Srishti Ojha Jul 04, 2025
KADIST and ILHAM present 27 artists and collectives who reflect on the violent setting of the plantation and its role as a model for Western capitalism.
by Mrinmayee Bhoot Jul 02, 2025
A retrospective on the conceptual artist at Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong showcases text-centric work that documents the mundane aspects of the day.
by Lee Daehyung Jun 30, 2025
This exhibition reconfigures transnational exchange by foregrounding digital media, conceptual installations and archival interventions by Korean and Middle Eastern contemporary artists.
by Srishti Ojha Jun 27, 2025
A Boy and a Girl and a Bush and a Bird presents the Icelandic artist’s signature video installations alongside a newly commissioned series of landscape paintings in Estonia.
make your fridays matter
SUBSCRIBEEnter your details to sign in
Don’t have an account?
Sign upOr you can sign in with
a single account for all
STIR platforms
All your bookmarks will be available across all your devices.
Stay STIRred
Already have an account?
Sign inOr you can sign up with
Tap on things that interests you.
Select the Conversation Category you would like to watch
Please enter your details and click submit.
Enter the 6-digit code sent at
Verification link sent to check your inbox or spam folder to complete sign up process
by Samta Nadeem | Published on : Jun 19, 2025
What do you think?