As winter loosened its cold grip on Delhi, the India Art Fair staged its 16th edition at the start of February. Its striking black-and-white facade, designed this year by artist Ayesha Singh, reflected her ongoing research into the role played by women over the centuries in Indian architecture. Within the fair’s tents, a record 120 exhibitors showcased works across the fields of art and design, with several galleries reporting brisk sales. Representatives of major international museums such as the Guggenheim, the Louvre Abu Dhabi, and the Museum of Modern Art trooped into town to gauge what India and the wider South Asia region had on offer. 

Beyond Singh’s project bringing attention to the oft-overlooked contributions of women to art and architecture, this year saw a slew of shows and book releases by female artists. At the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) at Bikaner House, Vadehra Art Gallery presented a solo exhibition by Mumbai-based artist Shilpa Gupta. The theme of censorship and the fraught relationship between the state and its citizens permeated the show, evident in the installation Untitled (Spoken Poem in a Bottle) (2018– ); the songs of resistance in her sound installation Listening Air (2019–22); and a series of drawings, Untitled (2018– ), based on the lives of incarcerated poets. Protest movements similarly surfaced in Aban Raza’s brightly-hued canvases at her solo exhibition mounted later in the year at Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke.