In an art fair, some of the most compelling work isn’t inside the main fair tents or behind VIP previews. It unfolds quietly across the city inside a darkened gallery, or among woven cane furniture, or through a room strung with fragile threads, and in an exhibition that treats consumption as both habit and hazard.
The Young Collectors’ Programme (YCP), part of the India Art Fair, hosting its sixth edition at the Triveni Kala Sangam, has grown into a parallel art trail: part exhibition, part experiment, part community space aimed at making contemporary art feel less intimidating and more lived-in.
Curated by Wribhu Borphukon, the programme stretches beyond the fairgrounds into intimate, site-specific presentations, encouraging visitors to move, pause and engage. “It’s about sustaining curiosity and experimentation,” he says. “Collecting should begin with excitement, not intimidation.” Highlights of the walkthrough:
Archives, the new gallery
At Shridharani Gallery, the traditional white cube has been dismantled. Works appear layered rather than neatly spaced, inviting visitors to navigate intuitively. Borphukon describes it as an archive rather than an exhibition. “I want people to enter like archivists, building their own order and meaning. When a visitor first enters the art space, I want them to feel a bit confused and disoriented while simultaneously giving them a glimpse of the future,” he explains.
The artists reflect that multiplicity. Shailesh B.R., once a priest, interrogates ritual and repetition through machine-like movements. Sri Lankan artist Chaturi Nisansara’s bead-covered figurines evoke ancestral memory and feminised energy. Arnold van der Waal’s delicate cyanotypes map recipes and food histories from his fisherfolk community, while Deepak Kumar’s brass installation of a skeletal mammal resembles a miniature natural history museum, quietly addressing ecological damage and extinction.
There is no single narrative to follow. The gallery feels less like a showcase and more like a space of inquiry - messy, layered and alive.
Hybrid basketry
A few steps away, the mood shifts from archive to atelier.
Hyderabad-based architect Priyanka Narula’s design studio, The Wicker Story, places basketry within contemporary design; her rattan and cane pieces benches, tables, lighting , sit somewhere between furniture and sculpture.
Growing up, Narula watched street artisans weave bamboo on Hyderabad’s pavements. “I kept thinking how design could resonate with our heritage and still be sustainable,” she says. Founded in 2019, the studio now supports seven employees and around 40 artisans. The pandemic unexpectedly accelerated interest. “People began valuing what was local and handmade,” she notes.
At the fair, her project Contemporary Heritage: A Living Weave includes the Muggu Bench and Muggu Flower, inspired by the looping geometry of kolam patterns, and Along the River Table, shaped like a flowing mat. The works double as gathering spaces built for conversation as much as contemplation. Here, craft isn’t preserved behind glass. It’s meant to be touched, used and lived with.
Threading memory as resistance
Dwimu Boro’s installation Swrkhi, named after a traditional Boro spinning tool caught our eye; it fills the space with hand-spun threads stretched into incomplete patterns. Visitors walk through the woven forms, brushing past fibres that tighten, loosen or snap.
“The act of spinning is about time and repetition,” Boro says. “Each turn carries memory.” The broken threads speak of interrupted histories and fading knowledge, while the faint sound of women’s weaving conversations anchors the work in lived experience. “It’s not only about loss,” he adds. “It’s also about hope and preservation.”
Nearby drawings rooted in Naga folklore treat mark-making as an act of remembrance, each line carrying ancestral memory. Sewali Deka’s installation brings the rhythms of agrarian life into the gallery, with three farmers occupying the space alongside scattered rice on the floor, a reminder of land and labour.
In contrast, a generative digital video reimagines Meghalaya’s living-root bridges as shifting, breathing ecosystems, constantly growing rather than fixed in time. Together, the installations function as acts of remembrance.
Questioning what we consume
The trail ends at Triveni Kala Sangam with Ether Project’s group show Edible Arrangement, which turns the idea of consumption into a quiet provocation.
The exhibition asks what we absorb daily, not just food, but images, politics and memory. Works move between charcoal, marble, film and installation. Nasir Sheikh reflects on the militarised landscape of Kashmir. Cyrus Penuganti’s marble sculptures resemble memorials to eroded terrain. Abel Ruben captures the speed of contemporary life through blurred figures that capture the restless pace of contemporary life.
The experience is intentionally uneasy. Rather than offering answers, it leaves viewers questioning their own habits of looking and living.
Responding to the evolving mindset and trends among artists of this generation, he says many are increasingly embracing sustainability and using their work to express personal views and social concerns, often leaning towards activism.
Galleries, too, are “willing to experiment curatorially, presenting research-driven and experimental practices rather than selections that are purely market-led .”
Taken together, the Young Collectors’ Programme doesn’t behave like a side event to the fair. We met curators, we saw artworks and how they can move into a gallery. Our only quibble -- what does 'young collectors' or a new way of collecting have to do with it?