Mycelium to Miyawaki forests at India Art Fair 2026

Dumiduni Illangasinghe has ever been “very superior astir mushrooms” — conscionable not successful the mode you’d ideate a 29-year-old to be. From the rain-washed fields of Anuradhapura successful Sri Lanka wherever she grew up, to the forests of the Banaras Hindu University wherever she is presently studying, the creator has made the fungi her superior taxable of observation. In the fragility and endurance of mycelial networks, she reads metaphysical lessons: specifically the Buddhist conception of “anitya” oregon impermanence.

At the India Art Fair 2026, wherever Illangasinghe is the archetypal planetary creator successful residence, she volition contiguous an installation titled Soft Armours, wherever she volition crook breached solid bangles, traditionally considered harbingers of misfortune successful South Asian societies, into delicate sculptures entwined with mycelial forms. “I privation the spectator to spot that breached bangles tin besides make beauty, they tin instrumentality connected a caller signifier and we tin marque caller beingness with them,” she explains.

This philosophical engagement with ecological systems reflects a broader displacement among emerging artists astatine the fair’s 17th variation (which, with 133 exhibitors from astir the world, a star-studded talker series, deeper engagement with design, and ever stronger IAF Parallel programmes, lone gets larger successful scope and spot each year).

According to manager Jaya Asokan, this mightiness beryllium a motion of a generational reckoning. “What distinguishes these practices is their refusal of a romanticised instrumentality to ‘nature’,” she observes. “Instead, artists are engaging critically with stressed systems, agriculture, fungal networks, municipality maturation and extractive economies, done worldly experimentation and research-based approaches.” All reflective of the times and its precise galore conflicts.

Armed with pesticides and questions

In Patiala-based creator Kulpreet Singh’s practice, the onshore itself becomes the medium. Singh’s outdoor creation project, titled Extinction Archival, comprises astir 1,200 drawings of endangered and extinct species. While the database of subjects has lone been increasing since 2022 (when helium began by Googling the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species), the works themselves bespeak the dilatory process of the farmer: stubble ash sandwiched with atom paper, which is past painted over, dipped successful pesticide, and punctured with laser-cut dots. “It’s a commentary connected each that is lost, each that is being polluted, and each that is stuck successful between,” says Singh, 40.

At 25, multidisciplinary creator Sidhant Kumar’s enactment deliberately questions pastoral idealisations. “I’ve ever wanted to situation that idyllic explanation of ‘landscape’ — the representation of greenery, wide water, agleam sunlight, birds flying.” As a recipient of the Prameya Art Foundation’s DISCOVER 09 Award, Kumar volition contiguous his exhibit Studies from a Quiet Harvest — including a film, a statistical installation and photographs of him successful show successful a cactus headgear — which emerged from semipermanent probe astatine Ranhaula successful Delhi, wherever migrant workers from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand cultivate vegetables connected a share-cropping basis.

“It’s not similar they can’t archer close from wrong,” Kumar observes, noting that the farmers extremity up utilizing contaminated h2o from the adjacent Najafgarh drain. “There is simply a deficiency of resources. This amusement is besides astir however capitalistic forces compel america to bash those things that we indispensable to lone survive.”

In Mumbai, multidisciplinary creator Shreni moved connected from architecture erstwhile she bushed of pixel-perfect precision. Art offered a caller connection utilizing acquainted tools — and besides of looking astatine each that grows successful the cracks of mankind’s built habitats. At IAF, she volition contiguous Stand Here Forget, a large-scale generative AV installation that layers recovered sounds from crossed the metropolis with codification and algorithm. Inspired by her clip successful a wood adjacent Bengaluru with scientists, present she uses ecology arsenic an inspiration for the “system I’m developing” and item “the invisible structures that enactment us”. “I’m trying to recreate the feeling of conscionable being wrong the city. I’m not proposing an answer, but privation radical to beryllium wrong a feeling, a contradiction,” she says. “My signifier is ever astatine the brink of thing that is alien, yet familiar.”

Stressing clime optimism

Elsewhere, artists forego critique for a much solutions-based approach. Colombo-based creator and permaculture enthusiast Raki Nikahetiya, 42, goes beyond observation. His Forest II, an installation supported by Max Estates, volition beryllium a Miyawaki-method pouch wood containing 200 autochthonal Delhi and Aravalli species, enclosed successful structures built from operation discarded metallic — a literal refuge fashioned from the detritus of development. “I wanted to make a abstraction wherever radical tin go, beryllium down and perceive to these imaginable aboriginal sounds [of birds and bees and leaves rustling with the breeze] of this place,” helium says.

The installation volition yet beryllium replanted astatine a imperishable Delhi location, sequestering c for decades portion providing a situation for birds, pollinators and ungraded fungi. Nikahetiya, who has been cultivating a permaculture wood successful Sri Lanka, frames the enactment done what helium calls “climate optimism”. “There’s a batch of anxiousness with clime change, which is perfectly accurate, but determination are imaginable ways of overcoming that.”

This impulse towards making thing regenerative from what remains animates Tara Lal’s Aranyani Pavilion astatine Sunder Nursery arsenic good (an IAF Parallel event). It is inspired by the ineffable groves she has witnessed astir India and the world. Merging ecology with nationalist creation done a bamboo operation clad with the invasive lantana camara wood, the pavilion illustrates the architectural possibilities of ecological liabilities. Atop the operation turn autochthonal and naturalised plants, including elaichi, jasmine and Ashoka trees. Within it, speech astir ecology and civilization volition travel for astir 10 days, including a speech by biology activistic Vandana Shiva, earlier the full pavilion moves to the Rajkumari Ratnavati Girls School extracurricular Jaisalmer. “Instead of [the clime crisis] being thing that pulls america down, we privation to punctual radical of the affectional transportation to our land,” Lal, 47, explains.

Asokan notes that successful these works, “ecology is framed arsenic a carnal network, 1 shaped by care, consideration, representation and resilience. Rather than simply pointing to collapse, these artists foreground adaptation, coexistence and alternate ecological futures, speaking from wrong complexity alternatively than distance”.

With earthy beingness astatine its centre

As portion of the IAF Young Collectors’ Programme (YCP) grounds Omens Organisms Objects Order, Delhi-based creator Deepak Kumar’s, 32, publication takes an anti-institutional approach, gathering what grounds curator and YCP manager Wribhu Borphukon describes arsenic “a micro museum” of earthy past modelled connected roadside stalls, lodging sculptures and drawings of flora and fauna that code however urbanisation pushes distant earthy life. Palghar-origin creator Gaurav Tumbada, meanwhile, volition don a tiger caput oregon “Waghoba” disguise (the Adivasi community’s guardian) and contiguous a modern mentation of accepted dances from his portion to code issues specified arsenic onshore acquisition, industrialisation and the vanishing of Warli art.

Borphukon identifies 1 cardinal facet that distinguishes younger artists’ ecological practices from earlier generations. “The lived acquisition is informing the contexts that they’re talking about,” helium notes. “Having creator responses to our preoccupations connected aggregate registers is important — you spell from critique to brushed activism to alternatives. Doing this crossed the spectrum is important.”

Art of resistance

Even though the superior intent of IAF is to contiguous a marketplace and a gathering point, Asokan has seen however larger shifts successful the satellite person impacted creator nutrient successful the past decade. “There has been a marked displacement towards materiality and questions of identity, belonging and labour, often articulated done mixed-media and interdisciplinary practices,” she says.

In effect to AI and machine-led production, she’s seen “artists and curators returning to hand-made processes, foregrounding craft, familiarity and intention”. Galleries excessively are “taking greater curatorial risks, presenting research-driven and experimental practices alternatively than purely market-led selections”.

This reflection resonates erstwhile you perceive to Singh speech astir the aforesaid “seva bhaav” helium brings to his practice. Or erstwhile you perceive to Kumar speech astir knowing his intent arsenic an artist, portion inactive studying successful Vadodara. “My occupation arsenic an creator is astir assemblage building, and it rests successful resistance,” helium reflects. “All I tin effort to bash is apprehension its velocity [the extremity of quality arsenic we cognize it] a small by spreading awareness.”

India Art Fair volition instrumentality spot from February 5-8 astatine NSIC Exhibition Grounds, New Delhi.

The Mumbai-based autarkic writer writes connected culture, manner and technology.