Iram Art Gallery’s presentation at Art Mumbai brings together modern and contemporary Indian art as a continuum rather than a chronology. Drawn from the gallery’s programme, the booth places works from different generations in conversation, allowing affinities of form, material, gesture and artistic enquiry to emerge across time.
Rather than separating the modern from the contemporary, the presentation considers how questions initiated by earlier generations—around abstraction, figuration, landscape, material, identity and the conditions of making—are inherited, challenged and reformulated by artists working today. Historical works provide points of departure, while contemporary practices complicate and extend these trajectories.
The architecture of the booth follows the same principle. A restrained sequence of walls, openings, and viewing spaces creates moments of encounter rather than a conventional chronological hang. Works are given sufficient space to retain their individual presence, while carefully considered juxtapositions encourage unexpected relationships between generations.
The presentation ultimately reflects Iram Art’s wider programme: to build meaningful connections between histories of Indian modernism and the evolving practices of the present, while allowing each to alter how we see the other.
