For Delhi's art frat, the winter chill of January is a time of heated activity. It's that time of the year when movers and shakers of the international art world, in ever larger numbers, descend on the city to take in the India Art Fair (IAF). After all, this is where they can hope to see, under one roof, the widest range of modern and contemporary art from India and, increasingly, from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh.
No surprise then that the festival, which is into its eighth edition this year and will be held from January 28-31, is the fifth most attended art fair in the world (the last edition had around 80,000 visitors). For Indian artists and galleries, it is undoubtedly the most significant event on the entire calendar.
After all, where else could they hope to get such large audiences for their artists? And, as founding director Neha Kirpal keeps reiterating, "The fair is as much about educating the people, about creating a popular taste in art as it is about business. This is very important since India is not a museum-going nation."
But for the galleries at IAF, the attraction will as much be the host of officials from some of the leading arts institutions across the world who've taken to coming to Delhi during the fair. This year there'll be high-level representation from Guggenheim and Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, Carnegie Museum of Art, Palais de Tokyo, London's Victoria and Albert Museum, art auction powerhouse Christie's, the Colombo Art Biennale and Lahore Biennale Foundation, to name a few.
Besides, there'll be a whole host of art collectors, local and international — Kiran Nadar, Tariq al Jaidah, who runs an independent contemporary arts forum in Doha (Qatar) called the Katara Arts Centre, Lu Xun, a Chinese real-estate developer, art collector and the man behind Nanjing's Sifang Art Museum, Pakistani collector Khurram Kasim, Shohidul Choudhury from Dubai and Aarti Lohia from Singapore.
This year will also see two high-end arts focussed travel companies – Adventures in Art and The Cultivist – bringing groups to Delhi. But, "someone from, say, America will not buy a ticket to come to Delhi to see something that he can find in London or Paris. We need to provide him with a one-stop shop for what's happening in this part of the world," says Zain Masun, IAF's new international director.
To this end, IAF offers a much more tightly-curated fare this year, stamped clearly with the global clout of Masud, who worked previously for five years as assistant fair director of Art Dubai. There's also greater attention to design, with leading architectural firm Morphonegenesis stepping in to design the tents.
The number of galleries have reduced from 85 to 70 this year and the programme is more inclusive, in terms of its geographic range and the art practices on show. Eighteen galleries are participating at IAF for the first time this year, including one each from Rome (Galleria Marie-Laure), and San Francisco (Hosfelt Gallery, showing Manhattan-based artist of Indian origin Rina Banerjee). There's also Sabrani Amrani from Madrid, which is showing an interesting potpourri of non-Western artists including UBIK, an Indian-origin Dubai-resident artist who came to be written widely for his installation, Father Son and Holy Ghost, featuring lenticular images of Barack Obama, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Osama bin Laden.
Cutting edge, experimental, non-gallery art practices get space at IAF in a new initiative called Platform, which will have participation from several artists' collectives from southeast Asia, archives and Blueprint12 – a pop-up gallery which has an exciting, innovative programme. Also, new this year is a space called IAF Atrium screening art films, curated by Shai Heredia, the director of Experimenta, the international festival for "moving image art."
Clearly, art lovers in Delhi are going to be spoilt for choice.
