Latitude 28

No thread on a loom knows it is old or new. It only knows its place in the pattern, where it crosses, where it holds, what it is asked to carry. Gujarat has understood this for centuries, in Patola silk that takes a year and two pairs of hands to finish, in Ajrakh block prints where a design laid down generations ago still waits, patiently, for the next craftsman’s touch to complete it. Nothing in that tradition is retired to make room for what comes after. It is simply rewoven, tighter, into what already exists.

We have borrowed that logic for our presentation at India Art Fair’s Ahmedabad edition and are pleased to present a selection of artists whose practices reflect the gallery’s sustained engagement with contemporary Indian art, while also marking the continuities that have shaped its programme over the years. The presentation brings together Neha Sahai, Juhikadevi Bhanjdeo, Sai Karnekota, Sudipta Das, Suhani Jain, Yogesh Ramkrishna, Raj Jariwala, and Anupama Alias Anil.

What connects the works is a shared attentiveness to the world around them: to memory and place, the body and its histories, the constructed image, the handmade object, and the ways in which personal experience can become a larger cultural language.

At the heart of the presentation is an interest in the many ways artists negotiate between the intimate and the expansive. Neha Sahai’s practice approaches the body and its surrounding spaces through a language that is at once tactile and contemplative. Sai Karnekota’s work similarly invites attention to material and process, allowing seemingly modest gestures to acquire a quiet visual intensity. Sudipta Das brings together questions of history, memory and representation, often looking at the fragments through which larger social narratives are constructed. Together, these practices point towards an understanding of contemporary art as a space where the personal is never entirely separate from the collective.

The works of Suhani Jain extend this enquiry through a distinct approach to form and material. Her practice demonstrates how familiar visual language can be reworked into something unexpected, where process becomes as important as the finished image or object. Raj Jariwala’s work introduces another register, engaging with the relationship between image, perception and contemporary visual culture. Across these practices, there is an emphasis on looking closely at an object, an image, a surface or a memory, and allowing that act of looking to unfold gradually.

Yogesh Ramkrishna’s practice brings questions of material, transformation and cultural memory into dialogue with contemporary modes of making. His works occupy a space between the recognisable and the reimagined, drawing attention to how histories and inherited visual forms continue to evolve in the present.