Khoj's When We Return explores the unfinished business of belonging

Downstairs first. If the jet font on the front of Khirki Extension’s white-bricked studio-gallery won’t lead you there, the security guard will. You will go, later, back to the entrance to take the stairs to the last exhibit. Even before you’ve seen a single work, you’ll be conscious of the need to return, which for you, at this moment, is simple enough. Fitting. For this day at least, it’s the last time you’ll take movement and visiting for granted. At Khoj Studios, six young curators from Bangladesh, India, Iran, Nepal and Sri Lanka are presenting the culmination of their year-long Curatorial Intensive South Asia fellowship, themed on the process of returning – in all its messiness and politics. I’ve always been fond of exhibitions that are based on community-centred initiatives, ones that require people to be with each other. At the same time, this manages to stand out. Here are three shows that we especially recommend visiting for.

A Place is Made but, Do We Get It? | Curated by Anna Sireiliu Charenamei

Spread eagle across the terrace is a fierce question, asked through warmth, to Delhi’s artgoing public that sings praises of rice wine. Is it acceptable to consume Humayunpur's food and ‘cool’ without accounting for the political violence that drove them here in the first place? What does this mean for those who call Humayunpur home? 

I recognise spots I’ve flitted in and out of in Bellona Yumnam’s and Menty Jamir’s photography, taken with a lingering gaze and smiles of their subjects mid-work, and the point is immediately drawn. Sarah Lalhrietzoul’s painting makes use of her rural hometown’s carrom board and tarpaulin sheet as a canvas, re-imagining them as high art after migration strips one of leisure. There is craft by children guided by workshops in Manipur, imagining Delhi; Felix Chungkham’s sketches capture nicks of dialogue and moments that are a mix of wit and pathos. There is never enough closure, this exhibit seems to say, except in documenting how one carries on. Do not expect a resolving end.

Unfinished | Curated by Hengame Hosseini

Hosseini is based out of Iran. This was meant to focus on Tehran’s former red-light district that was destroyed during the 1979 Revolution. Due to current wartime conditions, the works for this couldn’t make it in time for the exhibition, and nor could she. Instead of an omission or a delay for Unfinished, you are instead met with one room of Khoj dedicated to the process and what prevented them. There are seats for you to take your time digesting the result, turning it over and over in your head. Truthfully, it’s best you just walk in without knowing exactly what’s there. You can see a few works intended for this in the booklet for this exhibition.

UNEARTH: A Play on Material Memory | Curated by Narmeen Sajid

This is presented as a travelling play, one that gains meaning as it moves between geographies. Installations play with absence and presence to surface hidden worlds: like those in Syed Ali Sarvat Jafri’s layered colonial histories embedded in lakhori bricks from Faizabad and Ayodhya, Ayushi Shukla’s plays on the incomplete feminine forms in the caves of Ajanta-Ellora, Nad E Ali’s photo series of the blur of border-crossing travel from Lahore. This exhibit makes beautiful use of multimedia, diverting your attention from form to form without feeling like you’re moving too fast in the same room. There is genuine wonder in how the artists have treated history.

There are also: what do we do with what is broken, curated by Pooja Poudel, Absence as an Artifact curated by Emdadul Hoque Topu, and as needed curated by Thinal Sajeewa. Kathmandu-based Poudel’s show is a meditation on brokenness as a condition rather than an anomaly, veering into the audiovisual along with powerful texts, sitting comfortably with cloth and stitch. Topu’s is based on the 1959-63 construction of the Kaptai Dam in Bangladesh and subsequent displacement of people, refusing to treat their images as mere ethnographic evidence, while Sajeewa takes on the improvisational logic of recipe writing, where measurements give way to taste and availability, with a tightly focused three-person show asking what else a recipe can be, with a focus on anti-caste history. These are equally worth checking out: we just think they’re more powerful as you walk in on the day of.

Time Out tip: Go with at least an hour in hand. There’s a decent, well-priced cafe operating in the space. Depending on when you go, there may be a screening or workshop somewhere in Delhi organised by one of the artists – ask the guides!

Price: Free.

Opening hours: Until March 22. Tues-Sun. 11am-7pm.

Address: Khoj International Artists’ Association, S-17, opposite Select Citywalk, near Sai Baba Mandir, Block J, Khirki Extension, Malviya Nagar, New Delhi, Delhi 110017