Dumiduni Ilangasinghe has always been “very serious about mushrooms” – just not in the way you imagine a 29-year-old to be. From the rain-washed fields of Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka where she grew up, to the forests of Banaras Hindu University where she is currently studying, the artist has made fungi the primary subject of her observations. In the fragility and endurance of mycelial networks, she reads spiritual lessons: specifically Buddhist concepts.”impermanent“Or mortality.
At the India Art Fair 2026, where Ilangasinghe is the first international artist in residence, she will present an installation titled soft shellWhere she will transform broken glass bangles, traditionally considered harbingers of bad luck in South Asian societies, into delicate sculptures fused with mycelial forms. She explains, “I want the audience to see that even broken bangles can create beauty, they can take on a new form and we can create new lives with them.”
Dumiduni Ilangasinghe
soft shellWhere broken glass bangles transform into delicate sculptures linked by mycelial shapes
This philosophical engagement with ecosystems reflects a broader shift among emerging artists in the 17th edition of the fair (which, with 133 exhibitors from around the world, a star-studded speaker series, deep engagement with design and increasingly strong IAF parallel programmes, grows larger in scope and strength every year).
According to director Jaya Ashokan, this could be a sign of a generational reckoning. “What is different about these practices,” she says, “is their refusal of a romantic return to ‘nature.’” “Instead, artists are critically engaging with stressed systems, agriculture, fungal networks, urban development, and extractive economies through material experimentation and research-based approaches.” All reflect the times and its many struggles.
Jaya Ashokan, Director, India Art Fair
Armed with pesticides and questions
In the work of Patiala artist Kulpreet Singh, the land itself becomes the medium. Singh’s outdoor art project, titled extinction archiveContains approximately 1,200 images of endangered and extinct species. While the list of subjects has only been growing since 2022 (when he started looking up the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species on Google), the works themselves reflect the farmer’s slow process: stubble ashes are sandwiched with rice paper, which is then painted, dipped in pesticide, and perforated with laser-cut dots. “It’s a commentary on all that is lost, all that is being polluted, and all that is stuck in between,” says Singh, 40.
Kulpreet Singh
extinction archiveWith approximately 1,200 illustrations of endangered and extinct species
At the age of 25, multidisciplinary artist Siddhant Kumar’s work deliberately questions pastoral idealization. “I always wanted to challenge that happy definition of ‘landscape’ – greenery, clear water, bright sunshine, pictures of birds flying.” As a recipient of Prameya Art Foundation’s Discover 09 Award, Kumar will present his exhibition Study from a cool harvest – which includes a film, a statistical installation and photographs of their performance in cactus headgear – emerged from long-term research in Ranhola, Delhi, where migrant workers from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand cultivate vegetables on a share-cropping basis.
Siddhant Kumar
Study from a cool harvest (2025)
“It’s not that they can’t differentiate between right and wrong,” says Kumar, adding that farmers use contaminated water from the nearby Najafgarh drain. “There is a scarcity of resources. The show is also about how capitalist forces force us to do the things we must do to survive.”
In Mumbai, multidisciplinary artist Shreni moved on to architecture when she grew tired of pixel-perfect precision. Art offered a new language using familiar tools – and also a vision of everything growing in the cracks of mankind’s constructed habitats. She will perform in IAF stand here and forgetA massive generative AV installation that layers code and algorithms to find sounds from across the city. Inspired by time spent in a forest near Bengaluru with scientists, here she uses ecology as inspiration for “the systems I’m developing” and sheds light on “the invisible structures that support us.” She says, “I’m just trying to recreate the feeling of being within the city. I’m not giving any answers, but I want people to sit with a feeling, a paradox.” “My practice is always on the verge of something that is foreign, yet familiar.”
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Emphasis on climate optimism
Elsewhere, artists abandon criticism for a more solution-based approach. Colombo-based artist and permaculture enthusiast Raki Nikhetiya, 42, is beyond observation. His forest secondOne installation, supported by Max Estates, will be a Miyawaki-style pocket forest containing 200 native Delhi and Aravali species, enclosed in structures made from construction waste metal – a literal shelter made from the debris of development. “I wanted to create a space where people could go, sit and listen to these possible sounds of the future [of birds and bees and leaves rustling with the breeze] Of this place,” he says.
Raki Nikhetiya Photo credit: Laurent Ziegel
The installation will eventually be relocated to a permanent location in Delhi, sequestering carbon over decades and providing habitat for birds, pollinators and soil fungi. Nikhetiya, who is cultivating a permaculture forest in Sri Lanka, frames his work through “climate optimism.” “There is a lot of concern about climate change, which is absolutely right, but there are also potential ways to address it.”
forest secondA Miyawaki-Method Pocket One
This impulse towards creating something regenerative from what is left also animates Tara Lal’s Aranyani Pavilion at Sunder Nursery (an IAF parallel phenomenon). It is inspired by the sacred groves he has visited in India and around the world. Mixing ecology with public art through aggressively covered bamboo structures lantana camara The wooden pavilion reflects the architectural possibilities of ecological liabilities. Native and naturalized plants grow on top of the structure CardamomJasmine and Ashoka trees. Within it, talks about ecology and culture will run for about 10 days, including a talk by environmental activist Vandana Shiva, before the entire pavilion moves to Rajkumari Ratnavati Girls School, outside Jaisalmer. “instead of [the climate crisis] Having something that pulls us down, we want to remind people of our emotional connection to our land,” explains Lal, 47.
Tara Lal
Aranyani Mandap in Sundar Nursery
Ashokan states that in these works, “ecology is framed as a material network, shaped by care, consideration, memory, and resilience. Rather than simply pointing to collapse, these artists foreground adaptation, coexistence, and alternative ecological futures, speaking from within complexity rather than distance”.
Natural life is at its center
As part of the IAF Young Collectors Program (YCP) exhibition omens organism objects order, The contribution of 32-year-old Delhi-based artist Deepak Kumar takes an anti-institutional approach, creating what exhibition curator and YCP director Ribhu Borphukan describes as a “micro museum” of natural history based on roadside stalls, housing sculptures and paintings of flora and fauna, that shows how urbanization takes away natural life. Meanwhile, Palghar-origin artiste Gaurav Tumbada will wear a tiger head or “Waghoba” mask (patron of the tribal community) and present a contemporary interpretation of the traditional dances of his region to address issues such as land acquisition, industrialization and the extinction of the Warli art.
Deepak Kumar is working on his work lost native
YCP Director Ribhu Borphukan
Borphukon identifies one key aspect that distinguishes the ecological practices of young artists from those of previous generations. “The lived experience is informing the context of what they’re talking about,” he said. “It’s important to have artistic responses to our engagements on multiple registers – you go from criticism to soft activism and alternatives. It’s important to do that across the entire spectrum.”
art of resistance
Even though IAF’s primary purpose is to offer a marketplace and a meeting point, Ashokan has observed how major changes in the world over the past decade have affected artistic production. She says, “There has been a marked shift toward questions of materiality and identity, belonging and labor, often expressed through mixed-media and interdisciplinary practices.”
In response to AI and machine-based production, he has seen “artists and curators returning to hand-made processes, foregrounding craft, familiarity and intention”. Galleries are also “taking more curatorial risks, presenting research-driven and experimental practices rather than purely market-based selections”.
This observation is echoed when you hear Singh talking about the same.service price” He brings that into his practice. Or when you hear Kumar talking about realizing his purpose as an artist while studying in Vadodara. “My work as an artist is about community building, and it’s rooted in resistance,” he reflects. “I can just try to stop the momentum of it. [the end of nature as we know it] By spreading a little awareness.”
India Art Fair will be held from 5-8 February at NSIC Exhibition Grounds, New Delhi.
Mumbai-based freelance journalist writes on culture, lifestyle and technology.