[category]
[title]
Defence Colony's monthly night out is back, with the neighbourhood’s entire gallery lane staying open till 9 pm. Over the months that I’ve been attending, I’ve realised that the best way to make use of it is hitting the opening shows. And tonight, October 28, you move from Vinod Balak’s unsettling object-bodies to the fierce, funny resistance of Rina Banerjee. Memories opens an intimate conversation between Indian Modernist pioneer Avinash Chandra and his daughter Alita. At Dotwalk, soil holds the weight of forgotten labour and ecological grief, framed alongside the grand old ghosts of Modernism like Ara, Husain, and Bawa. Meanwhile, up on a second floor at Gallery XXL, a new personal favourite, post-graffiti art pushes against the clean, curated walls, reminding us of the street's pulse. Here are all of the opening shows you should look out for on your visit. Other shows are also happening at Shrine Empire, Method, Kalakaar, and more.
The nearest metro station to these galleries is Lajpat Nagar on the pink line.
Def Col Art Night shows opening on October 28
Vinod Balak at Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke (D-58)
Dis.em.Bodied H.ours is describes a world where the line between humans and the objects they own blurs, with people assembled as… object-bodies. Human dignity surrenders to the things we accumulate. Drawing from dark humor and bodily transformation, Balak's work creates a subtly unsettling dream. I’m definitely bookmarking this one for Halloween.
Rina Banerjee at Vadehra Art Gallery (D-53)
Discriminating taste, hallucinations of the tongue runs until November 18. Banerjee, born in Kolkata and based in New York, gives each work a long, poetic narrative title and says her art resists the colonial gaze while always staying funny. It's a big year for her. Her sculpture at the Yale Center for British Art is a Taj Mahal-shaped palace of steel and copper wrapped in pink cellophane, and she had a solo at Perrotin in New York in spring.
Haptic Memories: The Art of Avinash and Alita Chandra at Vadehra Art Gallery
Curated by Kishore Singh, Haptic Memories explores an intergenerational dialogue through delicate works on paper between Indian Modernist master Avinash Chandra, celebrated for his biomorphic abstractions and fluid line work, and his daughter, artist Alita Chandra. The show largely examines memory, the difference between his art and hers.
Songs The Soil Keeps at Gallery Dotwalk (D-34)
This group show, curated by Dotwalk's curatorial and research team, runs until November 15. The idea is to bring together, across modern and contemporary art, a collective look at land as a keeper of myths and memory about ecological transformation and the human labour that goes into it. The 14-artist-long list ranges from Modernists K H Ara, M F Husain and Manjit Bawa to Mehak Garg, Rija Kalita and Ravinder Reddy. It was first shown in Hyderabad in September with a longer list that included F N Souza, G R Santosh and A Ramachandran.
Is It? Or It Is? at Gallery XXL (A-277, second floor)
This group show opens early, from 5pm. The names are DSR, DO, Marina Zumi, Natasha Singh, RERO, Suruchi Choksi, Space Objekt, Thebackstudio, UBIK, Vernika Singh and ZERO.
XXL is devoted to urban contemporary and post-graffiti art, and it had opened its permanent Delhi space with the first Indian solo of the late Hanif Kureshi, co-founder of the St+art Foundation. It’s one of the closest galleries to the Defence Colony market, which has a bunch of cafes and bars.