Between Exile and Ecstasy: A walk through DCAW 2025

The Old Building opens with “Cast in Memory”, a sculptural presentation spanning materials, scales and sensibilities. The range is striking: bronze, terracotta, ceramic, stainless steel, paper, rope, beads, embroidery, and patina on copper.

Parul Gupta and Madhav Raman’s “Metaprism”, made with laminated glass, glue, and plywood, makes visitors pause for a moment. Depending on where one stands, the work refracts, splinters, and rejoins — appearing at once crystalline and corporate, a structure that looks uncannily like a modern office tower. A few steps away, Mahbubur Rahman’s ceramic boxing gloves bares mathematician Alan Turing’s prophetic words: “This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be.” Nearby, Rameshwar Broota’s monumental meditations, and Ravinder Reddy’s brightly painted heads sit beside works in gold, silver foil, terracotta, and wood. Mythology, selfhood, consumerism and ways of seeing converge in a room where every material speaks its own language.

Blueprint 12’s Tanvi Ranjan wove binary code into textiles, embedding human presence into data systems. (Photo: PR handout)

The Old Building thus becomes a house of echoes: sculpture as anchor, nuance as practice, resistance as voice.

Crossing into the CCA Building, the contemporary artworks call out the interpreter in you.

Latitude 28’s “In-Between / Beyond” brings together 17 artists navigating rupture and renewal. Farhat Ali’s gouache miniatures reimagined Disney figures into uneasy myths. Gopa Trivedi’s gold-and-gouache panels conjure hybrid creatures across twelve sheets. Chandan Bez Baruah’s woodcuts breathe mist into remembered forests, while Pratul Dash embedded fragments of urban detritus in concrete, make ruins permanent. First-time Delhi exhibitor Firi Rahman’s “Spaces and Memories XVII”, a fragile wooden cage behind which parrots are standing on a wooden bough, carries memory as something at once sheltering and entrapping.

For founder-director of Latitude 28 Bhavna Kakar, DCAW 2025 is a way of “championing voices from India and beyond, challenge boundaries, and reimagine the contemporary through dialogue, design, and discovery”.

At Blueprint 12’s “Mapping the Margin” artists negotiate visibility and erasure. Tanvi Ranjan weaves binary code into textiles, embedding human presence into data systems. Zoya Chaudhary’s cut-and-layered newspapers transforms discarded language into visual mesh. “With this presentation, we’re foregrounding artists who defy binaries — of visibility and erasure, intimacy and politics,” says partner Mandira Lamba.

At Exhibit 320’s “Where the Dust Settles” explores exile. Wahida Ahmed’s delicate drawings trace dislocation, while Deepak Kumar’s sculptures expand memory into three dimensions. Director Rasika Kajaria notes, “Together, these practices enrich our understanding of how form and materiality shape both concept and viewer engagement.”

Vadehra Art Gallery’s “Intimacy / Ecstasy” fills the courtyard-facing rooms and the first floor of the building. Anju Dodiya’s paintings explore the self as staged performance, while Astha Butail’s chant-like repetitions evoke the sublime. Sunil Gupta’s photographs examine queer identity and Ranbir Kaleka’s fantastical lightbox symphony collapse creation and destruction into dreamlike narrative. Director Roshini Vadehra describes the event as “a wonderful kickstart to the new art season in Delh.i”

Gallery Espace focuses on process and patience. Sheetal Gattani’s surfaces reward close looking, while Sharad Sonkusale’s rhythmic marks unfold like a raga. Founder-director Renu Modi reflects, “Our presentation explores how recurring motifs and techniques are not merely stylistic choices but essential tools in shaping an artist’s visual language.”

Latitude 28’s First-time Delhi exhibitor Firi Rahman’s Spaces and Memories XVII. (Photo: PR handout)

The works at Shrine Empire foreground resistance. Works by Anoli Perera, Sajan Mani and Shruti Mahajan engage with gender, erased histories and the absurd repetitions of daily life. Co-founders Shefali Somani and Anahita Taneja explain, “Their practices engage with the evolving social, political, and material contexts shaping the region today.”

The walk concludes withTaqiya Qalaam at the LTC, curated by Priyanshi Saxena and designed as a home rather than a gallery.

Here, Chandan Bez Baruah’s woodcuts cover the walls. Amit Ambalal’s mischievous monkeys climb a screen that divides the room. By a sofa, Tayeba Lipi’s gleaming heels, crafted from blades, rest with disarming elegance — to give a reflection of women and their living spaces. In a spiritual corner, Chitra Ganesh’s graphic novel style goddesses from future glow, while a graphic-novel-style piece unfolded across a desk.

A bookshelf doubled as display: works about the intrusion of screens into family life are screwed across its panels, sharing space with sculptural pieces and even a pack of cigarettes. On a mantelpiece, an artwork leans casually, while a 2022 series by Shailesh BR about incense and prayer sits on an island. Above a bathtub — standing in for a bathroom — Sunil Gupta’s photographs of gay love hang, reframing intimacy within private space.

Designer Amrita Guha explains the intent: “Art doesn’t just belong in galleries; it lives in homes, in landscapes and in intimate, personal spaces. Our intent was to collapse these boundaries so visitors could experience art not as distant, but as something visceral and profoundly human.”

Leaving the lawns of Bikaner House, one might get a feeling of inhabiting several homes: the Old Building’s sculptural anchors, the CCA Building’s urgencies of exile and intimacy, and Taqiya Qalaam’s lived in space.