London’s Gallery Weekend gets an Indian accent

I have been living in London for three years now, and ever since I landed here it has felt like a show of swelling Indian pride, with the momentum only growing stronger across fashion, luxury, the arts, and craft. Just last month, at London Craft Week, Friday Sari Project and Moi x PDKF showed Indian craft and design as part of the official programming. That same week, London Original Print Fair had Indian artist Ian Malhotra’s meticulous etchings on view at Somerset House.

Now, as London Gallery Weekend gets underway, Indian gallerists and artists are forming part of the very tapestry of the gallery walk that thousands of collectors, curators, enthusiasts and institutions will undertake this week. And with the Serendipity Arts Festival bringing film, music and puppetry from India to South Kensington next week, I have my sturdy walking shoes on.

It would be easy to call this a moment, but perhaps the more useful word is momentum. Indian art is no longer a novelty in London, nor is it a soft-power accessory to an economic story. Instead it is being shown, sold, collected, studied and, most importantly, argued with. That, in my mind, is the real shift.

Jagdeep Raina’s She Pours Him Water at Indigo + Madder | Photo Credit: Aurelien Mole

South Asia in focus

At Frieze No.9 Cork Street, Vadehra Art Gallery returns to London Gallery Weekend for a fifth time — this time with A. Ramachandran, in what gallery director Roshini Vadehra describes as “a mini survey exhibition” across four decades, spanning paintings, drawings, lithographs and sculpture from the late artist. Project 88 also makes its first appearance in the same gallery with a group show that allows, as director Sree Goswami says, the feeling of “actually having a gallery in London for a month”, rather than the accelerated four-day tempo of an art fair.

Roshini Vadehra of Vadehra Art Gallery

Frieze No.9 seems to be a meeting point for cross-culture collaboration with British curators engaging with Indian gallerists and artists on cross-continental projects. In one week I have received three invites that have consistently coalesced around creativity from the subcontinent. Selvi May, director of the gallery, describes the space as having “beautiful conversation across the oceans that have longevity”.

Vadehra Art Gallery at Frieze No.9 Cork Street

I keep returning to that phrase because it feels more durable than the language of boom, trend or spotlight. A spotlight moves. A conversation, if tended properly, can gather force. And while a fair like Frieze (Frieze London and Frieze Masters) offers a spectacle (last year, the art fair had a whopping 10 Indian galleries as part of its showcase), a gallery exhibition permits the slower work of persuasion.

Noorain Inam’s Fantasies of persuasion at Indigo + Madder

In 2023, when Vadehra showed an Arpita Singh exhibition at Frieze No. 9, the works caught the eye of Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director at London’s Serpentine Galleries, which then led to the larger retrospective of the artist at the Serpentine.

Private institutions are doing the heavy lifting

London in the summer becomes a kind of cultural transit lounge. It brings patron institutions such as Tate, Delfina Foundation and Hepworth, alongside South Asians holidaying or passing through London for the summer and collectors en route to Art Basel (June 18-21). But what makes the current visibility feel different is that it is not being propped up by one heroic gallery or one record-breaking auction alone. It is the result of an ecosystem beginning to cohere.

Trupti Patel’s Looking at a mango tree in turmoil at Project 88 | Photo Credit: Anil R.

According to Krittika Sharma, owner and director of Indigo + Madder, a gallery founded in 2019 and whose programme has long championed South Asian and diasporic voices in London, the force of the present moment lies in its plurality. There are blue-chip moderns and emerging painters, diasporic practices and indigenous traditions, craft-led conversations and institutional retrospectives, all showcasing at the same time. Indian art is not being asked to stand for one thing, and is finally being allowed to contain multitudes.

“Art always evolves through some kind of a condition. You really can’t dictate what you want to paint. Many times, it’s a kind of dialogue between the painting and you, and the time when it was painted.”N.S. HarshaArtist

Artist N.S. Harsha | Photo Credit: Thulasi Kakkat

Beyond London Gallery Weekend, the auction houses are amplifying the signal. In March, Sotheby’s announced major South Asian results, with M.F. Husain’s Second Act reportedly sold for $5.1 million. Now, Christie’s London will hold Sublime Shadows: South Asian Art From a Distinguished Collection on June 11, its first dedicated South Asian Modern and Contemporary sale since 2019. Next month, Christie’s will also host The Meeting Ground: Scenes from the KNMA Collection, a major Kiran Nadar Museum of Art exhibition in London.

Shivangi Kalra’s That took way too long at Indigo + Madder

For much time now, private institutions — from KNMA to NMACC, RMZ Foundation and Hampi Art Lab — have been doing much of the heavy lifting for Indian art. They are part of the reason an artist can now travel abroad with context already attached. The recent India Pavilion at the Venice Biennale was a pivotal moment in showcasing what happens when public and private briefly converge.

‘Geography just deepens the work’

An ecosystem certainly creates momentum, but without demand there would be no growth or continued attention. So why is Indian art so enticing for the world right now?

Divya Pande, head of sales at Victoria Miro, also the gallery that will be showing contemporary artist N.S. Harsha’s Cameland the tent times during London Gallery Weekend, explains that it is after all a gallery’s role “to cultivate all audiences, not just South Asian, but international as well”. She further explains, “There is an energy now around seeing something outside of the Western canon. Over 20 years ago, when I was studying history of art at university, the study material didn’t really focus on anything outside Europe and America. That has been completely blown wide open now. Through art, history and political change, it’s a much wider world.”

N.S. Harsha’s Camel and the tent times, 2025 | Photo Credit: © NS Harsha, Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro

I also spoke to Harsha (who was rather hard to pin down, given that he does not use WhatsApp, Zoom or Google Meet). He brought the question of Indian art’s global resonance back to the human condition. “Art always evolves through some kind of a condition,” he says. “You really can’t dictate what you want to paint. Many times, it’s a kind of dialogue between the painting and you, and the time when it was painted.”

N.S. Harsha’s The ‘I’ in all of us | Photo Credit: © NS Harsha, Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro

That may be the most important point in all of this. The strongest Indian artists are not simply illustrating “India” for the world, they are speaking about the human condition: labour, memory, migration, ritual, ecology, gender, abstraction, humour, exhaustion and desire. They are contemporary artists first. Their geography deepens the work; it does not contain it.

The task now is to ensure that this conversation does not become seasonal décor. Momentum is useful, but I’d argue, infrastructure is the foundation. The real measure of this moment will not be how many Indian names London can host in June or October, but whether those names continue to enter collections, syllabuses, museums and long-term critical memory after the weekend crowds have moved on.

The column is dedicated to dissecting India’s growing presence around the world, against some of the most talked about cultural backdrops.

The writer is an independent journalist based in London, writing on fashion, luxury and lifestyle.