Opening on 27 March 2026, Akanksha Patil’s Narratives in Transit is a deeply political solo exhibition curated by veteran critic-curator Georgina Maddox, and hosted at Gallery Art Positive, Lado Sarai, New Delhi.
The Exhibition
Narratives in Transit takes as its subject one of the most pressing yet under-examined crises of contemporary India — the forced displacement of rural and semi-urban communities to accommodate the relentless expansion of cities. At the heart of the show is Patil’s deep engagement with Shivangaon,. It is a village site whose community has faced the destruction of homes under the pressure of urban growth. The exhibition unfolds this story through multiple layers. Cardboard works in her signature style, a large-scale mixed-media installation using cloth, cardboard, bricks, and cement. As well as a video projection that documents the lived testimonies of the displaced community.
A Multi-Sensory Installation
What makes this exhibition particularly striking is Akanksha Patil’s expansion beyond her established cardboard-based practice into an immersive, site-responsive installation. By combining raw construction materials — bricks, cement — with the fragility of cloth and cardboard, she creates a material language mirrors the very tension between permanence and erasure that defines forced migration. The show also features drawings of “home” made by the children of Shivangaon. Alongside on-site photographs and maps, turning the gallery space into an archive of a community’s memory and grief.
Akanksha Patil’s decision to involve the children of Shivangaon in the creative process elevates the exhibition beyond documentary into something more collaborative and ethical. Their drawings of home — likely rendered with the directness and emotion that adult artists often struggle to achieve — stand alongside the artist’s own visual vocabulary, creating a powerful dialogue between artistic statement and lived experience. The inclusion of maps and photographs further anchors the work in the specificity of real geography and real people, resisting any tendency to aestheticize displacement.
The Curatorial Vision
Georgina Maddox, an independent critic-curator with over 20 years of experience in Indian art and culture, brings her longstanding commitment to issues of marginalisation and social hierarchy to this show. Her curatorial statement reads the exhibition as the culmination of a two-year evolution in Patil’s practice — one that is as much about the artist’s own negotiation with belonging, family, and emotional roots as it is about political critique. Maddox situates Patil’s work within a broader feminist and humanist tradition that draws power from the personal as political.
Exhibition Details
The show runs at Gallery Art Positive, F-213/B, Old MB Road, Lado Sarai, New Delhi – 110030, from 27 March to 27 April 2026.
Narratives in Transit is a timely and urgent show — one that uses art not merely to represent displacement, but to insist that the stories of those displaced deserve to be seen, preserved, and felt.
Athmaja Biju is the Editor at Abir Pothi. She is a Translator and Writer working on Visual Culture.
