At Mandapo, the artist-led alternative space in Mumbai’s Fort district, Aatish Khobragade’s solo exhibition Empire of the Coin unfolded as a meditation on labour, value, and the emotional weight of survival under capitalism. Curated by art writer and editor Sushama Sabnis, the exhibition brought together large-format circular paintings and a kinetic sculptural installation, extending Khobragade’s ongoing inquiry into the lived realities of economic systems.
Sabnis frames the exhibition through a striking duality: “the glitter of metal conceals the ache of human endurance.” Her curatorial text situates Khobragade’s practice within a moral and experiential terrain, where the city emerges not as a site of aspiration alone, but as a structure of repetition, fatigue, and unresolved promise. The works, she writes, are “not born from abstraction but from conscience,” drawing from the artist’s own negotiations with the systems he now critiques.
Khobragade’s intervention lies in this tension between motion and stasis. The sculpture, like the paintings, resists spectacle in favour of slow revelation. As Sabnis writes, “the trolley becomes a quiet indictment of a civilisation that confuses motion with progress.” Each element accumulates symbolic weight, pointing to the burdens carried across class lines: necessity, debt, anxiety. Yet even within this immobility, there remains a fragile persistence, the balls continue to spin.
Presented at Mandapo, the exhibition also reflects the ethos of the space itself. Founded in 2025 by artist Sujiet Podar and patron Manish Dalal, Mandapo operates as a site for process-driven, experimental practices. Drawing from the architectural idea of the mandapa: a space of gathering and discourse—it seeks to create conditions for artistic risk and critical engagement. Empire of the Coin aligns with this vision, foregrounding a practice that is both materially rigorous and socially attentive.
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