Gallery XXL presents صبر، گھر، سرور (sabr, ghar, suroor), the first solo exhibition in India of late artist and designer Hanif Kureshi, which opened on October 12, 2025, at the gallery’s new permanent space in Defence Colony, New Delhi. The opening date coincides with what would have been Kureshi’s 43rd birthday.
The posthumous exhibition honors the legacy of Kureshi, who passed away in September 2024, showcasing 42 works from four series he developed between 2020 and 2024: Painter Kureshi, Tetris, Untitled, and Urdu. The show marks a significant moment for Gallery XXL, launching both a memorial to one of its co-founders and the gallery’s newly established Delhi location.
The Artist’s Practice
Born in Palitana, Gujarat, in 1982, Kureshi was celebrated for his innovative approach to typography and his commitment to preserving India’s vernacular visual culture. A graduate of Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda’s Faculty of Fine Arts, he spent over two decades working across advertising, art direction, and public art interventions.
His early fascination with hand-painted signboards led him to apprentice at age 16 with Painter Saleem, a local sign painter, where he learned to work with radium stickers, fluorescent lights, and metal plates. This experience shaped his lifelong engagement with typography as a kinetic, living form.
Kureshi’s HandPaintedType Project, initiated in 2010, became a crucial archive of India’s disappearing street typography. The project commissioned sign painters across India to create Roman alphabet characters in their unique styles, which were then digitized for online accessibility. During an INKTalks session, he explained: “India has always been a hand-painted landscape. Those signboards were such a strong identifier of our streets. But slowly, everything started to shift towards Helvetica and Arial — making the world feel singular, uniform.”
artworks featured: Banaras & Tetrapolis | 2024 | Hanif Kureshi | Image courtesy of the Estate of Hanif Kureshi and Gallery XXL
About the Exhibition
The exhibition’s title, sabr, ghar, suroor (perseverance, home, joy), references three seminal works from Kureshi’s Urdu series, first showcased at OUTSIDERS, Gallery XXL’s inaugural Mumbai exhibition in 2023.
Giulia Ambrogi, Chief Curator and Co-Founder of Gallery XXL and St+art India Foundation, observes: “Suroor, Ghar, and Sabr seem to slip away from the eye even as they enter it — rhythmic scripts oscillating between calligraphy and abstraction. Ghar (home), Suroor (joy), and Sabr (perseverance) embody Hanif’s approach to creation: rooted in joy, guided by belief, and sustained by perseverance. This is how he became a prolific creator across multiple fields — always remembering where he came from.”
The Painter Kureshi series, rendered in aerosol and acrylic on canvas, builds on his HandPaintedType Project, featuring works that oscillate between decipherable and abstract letterforms inspired by Roman and Devanagari scripts. Curator Veeranganakumari Solanki writes: “In this series, geometric forms move into abstraction that suggests Hanif’s many pasts — from architecture to signboards — while carrying play and pensiveness. Viewers can lose themselves in folds of thought and memory. The maze-like structures evoke narrative rabbit holes.”
Artworks featured: Mandawa & Tetrapolis Pieria | 2024 | Hanif Kureshi | Image courtesy of the Estate of Hanif Kureshi and Gallery XXL
The Tetris series, created shortly before Kureshi’s death and shown at his final exhibition at Wildstyle Gallery in Uppsala, Sweden, in June 2024, transforms letters into dynamic building blocks. Painted in enamel on MS sheets, these works invite viewers to construct their own landscapes of color and form.
The Untitled series explores the materiality of metal, using red and blue hues to distort architectural angles evocative of brutalist structures, creating layered plays between surface and perception.
Institutional Legacy
Beyond his studio practice, Kureshi co-founded several influential institutions: St+art India Foundation (2014), Guerrilla Art & Design (2013), XXL Collective, and Gallery XXL (2023). St+art India Foundation, established with Arjun Bahl, Akshat Nauriyal, Giulia Ambrogi, and Thanish Thomas, has organized numerous festivals and projects across Indian cities, creating over 600 murals with more than 100 artists.
As part of Guerrilla Art & Design, Kureshi developed iconic visual identities for major brands. Riyaaz Amlani, CEO of Impresario Entertainment & Hospitality, recalls his work for SOCIAL: “Hanif created a strong, bold yet minimal brand by using the stencil font Montana and introducing bilingual type — a first, fourteen years ago, when Indian design still carried colonial hangovers. It reflected a new, confident India embracing its roots. #thandibeer, #paani and #davadaaru became instant cult classics, now widely imitated. This bilingual approach — flaunting Devanagari script with pride — was Hanif’s innovation.”
Kureshi’s works have been exhibited at prestigious venues including the London Design Biennale (2016), Venice Biennale (2011), Centre Pompidou Paris (2018), and Triennale Design Museum Milan (2012). In 2016, GQ India named him one of the 50 Most Influential Young Indians.
Gallery XXL’s New Chapter
Established in 2023, Gallery XXL is relocating to New Delhi after a successful two-year period in Mumbai, where it hosted nine exhibitions. The gallery represents Indian and international artists working in urban contemporary practices.
A core component of the new Delhi space is XXL Shop, which will offer limited edition prints, publications, zines, and collectibles. Led by Asif Kureshi, Hanif’s younger brother, the shop aims to work with emerging artists to create affordable, accessible art objects for a wider audience.
Exhibition Details: sabr, ghar, suroor
Opening: Sunday, October 12, 2025, at 5 PM
Venue: Gallery XXL, A-277, Defence Colony, New Delhi – 110024
Cover Image: Donate a Wall | New-Delhi | 2017 In collaboration with Painter Kafeel Kureshi
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