Curated by Yash Vikram, Wild Grass at Eikowa Contemporary brings together five artists to examine how rural India is actively reshaping itself in the face of climate change, migration, and modernity.
About the Exhibition
Wild Grass has opened at Eikowa Contemporary on 20 March 2026, running through 18 April. The exhibition challenges two persistent myths about the Indian village — that it is either a pristine, untouched idyll or a lagging landscape awaiting urban intervention. Curator Yash Vikram positions the rural instead as a site of continuous negotiation, where traditional ways of life are not dissolving but transforming.
The title itself is quietly defiant. Wild grass doesn’t wait for cultivation; it adapts, spreads, and persists. That metaphor runs through the entire show.
The Artists and Their Practices
The five participating artists — Bhuri Bai, Hiren Patel, Mukesh Sah, Vaishali Oak, and Xewali Deka — each bring lived, located experience to their work. Their practices span tribal painting, printmaking, textile art, ecological installation, and landscape-based imagery, making Wild Grass one of the more formally diverse group shows on this theme in recent memory.
Bhuri Bai
Bhuri Bai, a Padma Shri awardee (2021) and pioneering figure in Bhil art. She was the first woman from her community to transition the sacred Pithora wall-painting tradition onto paper and canvas. Her journey, which began under the mentorship of Jagdish Swaminathan, has since taken her work to the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris. Her presence in Wild Grass grounds the show in the deep continuities of tribal visual culture, even as those traditions evolve.
Hiren Patel
Hiren Patel, a Vadodara-based printmaker and recipient of the 2025 Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant. He focuses his practice on South Gujarat’s agricultural landscapes. His work probes the contradictions of modern farming — where chemical inputs and technological interventions coexist uneasily with inherited land knowledge. The tension in his prints between rootedness and rupture makes him a natural fit for a show about rural transformation.
Mukesh Sah
Mukesh Sah brings the Himalayan ecology of Uttarakhand into the conversation. After a long career as an Art Director at major media organisations including The Times of India and Hindustan Times. Sah shifted to full-time studio practice in 2017. His work translates the rugged, forested landscapes of his upbringing into a contemporary visual language. one that has since been shown at the K-Art Centre in South Korea and the Lalit Kala Akademi in New Delhi.
Vaishali Oak
Pune-based textile artist Vaishali Oak works at the boundary of weaving and painting. Holding a master’s in Painting, she has chosen fabric as her primary medium. Building layered compositions that carry the depth and nuance of traditional painterly practice. Her work has been honoured at the 9th ‘From Lausanne to Beijing’ International Fiber Art Biennale (2016). She has exhibited internationally, most recently at the World Textile Art 25th Anniversary in Miami.
Artwork by Vaishali Oak
Xewali Deka
Xewali Deka, based in Assam, is both artist and farmer — a duality that shapes the entire register of her practice. Her MFA from Visva-Bharati University underpins work that engages directly with rural labour, collective memory, and agrarian ecology. A recipient of the Inlaks Fine Art Award (2024), she has shown at the India Art Fair’s Young Collectors Programme and the Serendipity Arts Festival, among other platforms.
Artwork by Xewali Deka
Curatorial Vision
Yash Vikram’s curatorial approach resists the temptation to romanticise or pathologise rural India — a balance that is harder to strike than it sounds. By selecting artists who are personally embedded in the landscapes they depict, the exhibition sidesteps the outsider gaze that has long complicated urban representations of the village. The result is a show where the contemporary Indian village appears not as subject to be explained, but as a perspective from which to look outward.
Wild Grass also arrives at a culturally significant moment. With large-scale infrastructure development, digital connectivity, and climate displacement all actively reshaping rural geographies across India, the exhibition’s questions feel urgent rather than nostalgic.
Exhibition Details
- Title: Wild Grass: Highlighting the Evolution of the Indian Village through Contemporary Art
- Artists: Bhuri Bai, Hiren Patel, Mukesh Sah, Vaishali Oak, Xewali Deka
- Curator: Yash Vikram
- Venue: Eikowa Contemporary, Gurgaon
- Dates: 20 March – 18 April 2026
This article has been created from the press kit shared with Abir Pothi. For press releases and related queries, write to editor@abirpothi.com.
Athmaja Biju is the Editor at Abir Pothi. She is a Translator and Writer working on Visual Culture.
