The India Art Fair 2025 made a resounding statement with its 16th edition, the largest to date, transforming Okhla’s NSIC Exhibition Grounds into a vibrant hub of art, culture, and design. With a record-breaking 118 galleries and institutions showcasing their work, the sheer scale of the fair could have felt overwhelming. But fear not! Now that the dust has settled on this year’s incredible event, we’ve curated a look back at some unforgettable Artists that truly stood out. You won’t want to miss reflecting on these moments and artworks as we look forward to the next edition.
Abir Karmakar, Nature Morte
Nature Morte, is known for its stars-and-stripes sense of blue-chip cool — with a wanting spirit of experimentation. Founded by the Indian-born Peter Nagy in 1997, the gallery has been instrumental in shaping contemporary art in India, nurturing the likes of the artists Subodh Gupta and Bharti Kher as well as the up-and-coming Ayesha Singh. Nature Morte, 2025, India Art Fair At India Art Fair 2025, Nature Morte presents the work of Indian artist Abir Karmakar. Karmakar’s photorealistic oil paintings and his immersive, life-sized installations of domestic interiors explore the lasting effects of colonialism in India. His work, which merges Indian and Western visual styles, quietly interrogates the cultural imprints on everyday spaces. The booth features a selection of his works along with pieces by other noted artists represented by the gallery.
Viraj Khanna, Kalakriti Gallery
At India Art Fair 2025, Viraj Khanna presents a one-of-a-kind blend of cloth, embroidery and painting with his newest works, on view with Kalakriti Art Gallery. Here, he chooses khakha, a historical embroidered preparatory drawing, as the surface he paints on. To give the depth and texture of his work, khakha draws patterns on paper using a stencil that makes them appear jagged and broken along the edges. Khanna speaks to the trend of idealised social media photography and is known for his interrogation of beauty and imperfection in the digital age. His clever use of textile techniques to expose the very real flaws that exist between these seemingly flawless representations challenges notions of reality and beauty.
Vasantha Yogananthan, Jhaveri Contemporary
Founded in 2010, the Mumbai gallery Jhaveri Contemporary has become known for featuring artists of fusion of Traditional and Modern Art. The gallery continues to expand the definition of art, with everything from the game-changing sculptures of Mrinalini Mukherjee (1949–2015) to the poignant interventions of up-and-comers like British artist Prem Sahib.
At India Art Fair 2025, Jhaveri Contemporary presents a diverse selection of works by over a dozen of its artists. The line between fact and fiction is blurred by the analogue photo work of the French-Sri Lankan photographer Vasantha Yogananthan. His photographs blend myth and reality into captivating visual stories, inspired by South Asian epics like the Ramayana.
Hylozoic/Desires, The Hedge of Halomancy, 2025, film from Avtar Foundation for the Arts
A special film, titled The Hedge of Halomancy, opened at India Art Fair, artist pair Hylozoic/Desires(H/D), with Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser, explores salt in its multiplicates political history and spiritual significations as well as chemical nature as an art provoking medium. The film is about the “Great Hedge of India,” is social Commentary through Art which showcases the British Inland Customs Office in the 1800s to prevent the free flow of salt and then to charge a tax on salt. Himali Singh Soin plays Mayalee, a Sambhari, Rajasthan-based courtesan who fought colonial efforts to strip her of her customary payment of salt.
Afrah Shafic, Experimenter
Experimenter Contemporary Art Gallery, Mumbai & Kolkata The gallery has mounted works by well-known painters, including the Tamil artist Christopher Kulendran Thomas, who has a Sri Lankan heritage. Another is Samson Young, who grew up in Hong Kong. Pieces by Afrah Shafiq, a Goan artist, in the experimenter, Shafiq mines libraries and archives, spinning imagination and tradition into narrative worlds that evoke historic places for viewers.
Madhu Das, Gallery Maskara
At India Art Fair 2025, Gallery Maskara exhibits the body-focused works of Madhu Das expounding upon what sculpture, space, and the body can create if treated as one body of work — the sculptural and spatial elements intending to act like lenses for introspection. Subverting the physicality of conventional performances, Das embraces stillness — his very being blends into his creations, often
hidden within their contours. The exhibition manifests itself as a contemplative space, suggesting audiences reflect on their relationship to public spaces and changing urban environments. When Das delivers these poetic interventions, she erodes the boundary between the artist and the artwork, urging audiences to stop, look and listen to the unseen pulse of contemporary life.
Arjun Das, Dhi Contemporary
In this edition of the FOCUS Section at India Art Fair 2025, Dhi Contemporary introduces Arjun Das, an artist whose sensitive employment of imagery through painted surfaces will sure to create an impact as his concerns about the migrant workers of Kolkata. Das uses wood, metal, stone coal, and asphalt to transform lived experiences into emotionally driven visual tales of displacement. His intensely personal works provide a raw but meditative lens into migration, making him one of the standouts of this year’s selection. The FOCUS Section further highlights bold contemporary voices, showcasing mid-career and emerging talent from South Asia.
Harsha Durugadda’s Sculpture at Vida Heydri Contemporary
The sculptures of Harsha Durugadda invite engagement and reflection, exploring how we relate to visual language and our fellow human beings. His works turn found sound into tactile sculptures in stone and glass, erasing the distinctions between performance and form. Often abstract or deconstructed, his pieces provoke perception, creating alternative, experimental interpretive methods.
Mithu Sen with Chemould Prescot Road
A dynamic group show at Chemould Prescott Road includes the conceptual artist and poet Mithu Sen, who often works with diverse materials while tackling societal taboos around the body and sexuality, achieving a provocative interplay between erotic and grotesque.
Sahil Naik, Experimenter
Flowing through Sahil Naik’s new series, Distant Whispers and Lucid Dreams, at the India Art Fair, is the genesis of a new body of work by the artist. The article traces paintings created during the Portuguese and British colonial periods by local artists and religious orders in Goa, Maharashtra and Gujarat. Naik specializes in paintings of distant landscapes and exotic plants and animals made by artists reliant on secondhand reports — and their imagination — rather than personal sight. Extracting what is fact, what is myth, and what creative interpretation, his investigation leads to an astonishing interaction that returns aspects of the murals from the Santa Monica monastery in Old Goa, dated to the 17th century.
Arpita Akhanda, Emami Art
Emami is presenting the artist Arpita Akhanda at IAF 2025, whose cross-disciplinary practice examines the intergenerational trauma of the 1947 Partition. Raised in a family of Bangladeshi migrants, Akhanda ponders the psychological imprint of this history, which lingers on the Indian subcontinent. Her work will be on view at Booth F03 as part of Polyphonic Confluences, a group show that unifies disparate artistic voices. The show interrogates dominant narratives about beauty, power and knowledge, shedding light on perspectives in the United States that are informed by their cultural histories — including Akhanda’s deeply personal explorations. This time around, a slew of international galleries and artists are participating in the India Art Fair and here’s a look at some of them.
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Gallery Continua
Galleria Continua is home to a multidisciplinary showcase including famous Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto. Sugimoto is a world-renowned figure best known for his stark black-and-white images, which received acclaim for their timeless and fiercely melancholic quality.
Claire Fontaine, Foreigners Everywhere/Straneiri Ovunque (2024-2024)
The Italian Embassy Cultural Centre in New Delhi which promotes Italian culture across disciplines by hosting art exhibitions and cultural programmes will host Fontaine’s
Nigerian Art Gallery, Ngozi Omeja Ezema, Kó
A Nigerian art gallery, Kó opened in 2020 to promote modern and contemporary art from across the African continent, particularly Nigeria. The gallery represents artists across diverse media and styles, including the Italian-Nigerian visual and textile artist Diana Ejaita and the Nigerian abstract painter Jerry Buhari. Kó features works in painting, drawing and textile art by an array of African artists, including Ngozi-Omeje Ezema. Nigerian ceramic artist Ezema uses her installation art to explore her experiences as a woman and the relationships within her family.
Huma Bhabha at David Zwirner Gallery
Two new sculptures by Huma Bhabha will be among the works brought to the 2025 India Art Fair (IAF) and will be shown by the David Zwirner Gallery. Noted for her large-scale sculptures created from found materials such as cork and styrofoam, Bhabha’s work often carries imagery that is reminiscent of “monstrous” entities, referred to as “vengeful gods” or “emissaries of peace.” Her work has been displayed at venues including Brooklyn Bridge Park, the Met rooftop and the Barbican in London. The India Art Fair 2025, featuring an impressive roster of Indian and foreign artists, promises to be a dazzling celebration of contemporary art. Oscar Murillo’sIndia examinations of cultural exchange via his diverse output — encompassing large-scale paintings, installations, and videos — will also be featured, as well as the yards of “monstrous,” gigantic sculptures of Huma Bhabha. And world-famous names who’ve helped shape the contemporary art world, such as Ai Weiwei and Anish Kapoor will be back at the event. Nikhil Chopra, a practitioner recognized for his curatorial work with the Kochi Muziris Biennale and his contributions to performance art, will likewise lend his voice to the fair. The past, present and future of South Asian and international artspace is new for the 2025 edition, and with an exceptional lineup, it is a story of something thrilling and thought-provoking. We truly hope this artist-to-watch line-up helps you navigate the IAF maze a lot better.
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