Every few months, headlines celebrate an Indian artwork breaking auction records, and of late, one has been reading about the pink health of the Indian art market. These moments are offered as proof of India’s arrival on the global art stage. But in this chase for validation pegged to prices and recognition set by the West, we risk forgetting the rich and complex history of India’s own cultural economies — systems that thrived for centuries on local consumption, not international approval.
The global art market’s value system rests on a pyramid built in the West: Institutions, curators, museums, collectors, and galleries, working in tandem to produce cultural legitimacy and market value. India lacks this infrastructure, with fewer than five actively collecting institutions. The government does not even recognise art as an asset. In this vacuum, value is dictated almost entirely by auction results, leaving little room for a truly Indian imagination of value or validation of natural tastes.
Why not, instead, build a market rooted in our own strengths? An Indian art market for Indians, by Indians, and of Indians? Such a model would not look only at record-breaking prices internationally, but at validation through volume — what I call the RRV principle: Reach, Relevance, and Volume; valuing a work for how the larger audience responds to it, and its historic value. As Pooja Pillai wrote in these pages, Indian cuisine was long reduced abroad to butter chicken and dosas. Yet within India, we have learned to value its true diversity by creating markets that serve everything from street food to fine dining. Why can’t art follow a similar structure? We create a one-million-dollar sale by either selling one one-million-dollar artwork, or selling a million one-dollar works. The market benefits from the latter in the long run, and unfortunately, the current systems favour the former.
The Kala Melas — a commercially conducive, community-led platform that integrates ritual, performance, art, craft, aesthetic, and culinary traditions — is among the world’s oldest forms of art fairs, unable to attain the tag of one. The differentiator is the context: While melas remain deeply rooted in local culture and continue to enable and promote the commercial consumption of cultural commodities, international art fairs often cater to a narrow circuit of collectors, curators, and galleries seeking validation within an elite ecosystem. In the process, the broader potential of the art market: To expand participation, access, and economic growth — remains underexplored.
Our art market will never truly come of age if it remains dependent on the scaffolding of the West. We must reimagine value on our own terms — through scale, inclusivity, and cultural rootedness. It is only then that Indian art will stop being exoticised, even within India, and start being lived, shared, and owned by the people it was always meant for.
The writer is an art advisor and curator
