Vadehra Art Gallery is set to open Baroda-based artist Shrimanti Saha’s much-anticipated second solo exhibition, Among Things That Grow and Return, from October 4 to November 1, 2025, at its Defence Colony space. Following her acclaimed 2023 debut at the gallery, Saha returns with a substantial body of oil paintings that explore storytelling, memory, and speculative landscapes where fact and fiction collide.
Artworks featured: Shrimanti Saha| Meeting with Artist Friend | Oil on linen | 2025 & Old Friends | Oil on linen | 2025
The exhibition brings together five large canvases, reaching up to 7.5 feet in scale, alongside eleven smaller, more autobiographical works. Saha’s practice intertwines ecology, gender, identity, and statecraft with literary and mythological references, drawing from Indo-Persian miniatures, European art history, science fiction, cinema, criticism, and natural almanacs. The result is a rich narrative lexicon of fragmented architectures, insurgent plant forms, and visceral characters populating her immersive worlds.
“I build worlds in my work that are partially fictional… It’s like a personal mythology that accommodates many references, an alternative history of sorts,” Saha explains, reflecting on this new body of work. The exhibition’s title underlines cycles of life, decay, and return, encompassing landscapes that shift between real and imagined domains.
In her curatorial essay, Beatriz Cifuentes Feliciano, former curator of international art at Tate Modern, London, notes the move to oil as transformative: “The surfaces are richer, more layered, and more sensorial… these tonalities gather an emotional and atmospheric resonance that transforms her intricate worlds into fully immersive environments.”
Born in 1987 in West Bengal, Saha trained at the Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda, where she completed her BVA and MVA in painting. Her career spans international residencies at institutions including the Vermont Studio Center and Bemis Center, and her works reside in collections such as the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in New Delhi. She was a finalist for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize in 2023 and is slated to undertake a residency at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in 2026.
Artworks featured: Shrimanti Saha |Siblings | Oil on linen | 2025 & Visitor | Oil on linen | 2025
Vadehra Art Gallery, founded in 1987, has long championed South Asian art and represents masters such as M.F. Husain, S.H. Raza, and Arpita Singh alongside contemporary voices like Shilpa Gupta and N.S. Harsha. With Among Things That Grow and Return, the gallery continues its commitment to showcasing dynamic narratives in modern and contemporary practice.
The exhibition is on view at Vadehra Art Gallery, D-53 Defence Colony, New Delhi, from October 4 to November 1, 2025, Monday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Cover Image: Shrimanti Saha| Among Things that Grow and Return | Oil on linen | 2025
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