Art Mumbai 2025

Mahalaxmi Racecourse, Mumbai 13 - 16 November 2025 
Overview
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Mahalaxmi Racecourse, Mumbai C23 https://www.artmumbai.com/

Artists:  A. Ramachandran, Atul Dodiya, Biraaj Dodiya, Faiza Butt, Himali Singh Soin, Jai Chuhan, Leela Mukherjee, Rameshwar Broota, Ranbir Kaleka, Shilpa Gupta, Sudhir Patwardhan, Sunil Gupta, Vivan Sundaram, Zaam Arif

 

The exhibition I want to put together today, titled A Short History of Decay, borrows from E.M. Cioran, whose meditations on despair—written in the ruins of post-war Europe—offer a bleak clarity. He writes: “Hope is the worst of evils, because it prolongs the torments of man.”

 

Here, decay is not a metaphor or a crisis. It is simply the condition. The slow rot of institutions, of language, of meaning. Not necessarily to be reversed, but to be witnessed. I want to turn to you to ask: what does it mean to create at this moment? Not to intervene or redeem, but to record? To hold the textures of dread you carry, the weight of unprocessed grief, the slippage of meaning?

 

Alongside decay, I want to explore doubt—perhaps the most radical force we have left. Cioran prized doubt above all else. In a time where certainty has become violent, where ideology turns intelligence into hate, how do we live with doubt? What happens when we begin to question even the values we hold most sacred: love, nation, family, justice? What does it mean to make work that begins from not knowing, and remains there?

 

- Anish Gawande

Works