Hanif Qureshi’s Undekhi 42: ‘Sabar, Ghar, Suroor’ in New Delhi on XXL

In Delhi’s Defense Colony, which is now buzzing with more than a dozen galleries, XXL is the latest arrival. What it calls “Urban Contemporary Art,” and dedicated to artists who think and create on an extra-extra-large scale, both in medium and ambition, the gallery’s first show feels monumental and intimate at the same time.

Patience, Home, Surur It is a posthumous tribute to its founder Hanif Qureshi – the street artist known as Daku, and the force behind both the St+Art India Foundation and Gallery XXL – who helped transform India’s walls into open-air museums. Qureshi died of lung cancer last year, just as he was beginning to paint for himself again.

The show brings together 42 never-before-seen works inspired by Qureshi’s lifelong love of Indian sign painting, typography and the visual language of the street: paintings and sculptures created in his Goa studio, where he moved with his partner during the pandemic, in the hope of giving his son the small-town childhood he once knew in Palitana, Gujarat. These are quieter, more intimate pieces: abstract studies of letters and light, stripped bare to the bones of language.

Hanif Qureshi’s Home (2024, UV print on ACP) | Photo Courtesy: Sohil Belim

untitled (2024, enamel on MS sheet) | Photo Credit: Zahra

“Hanif’s fascination with letters began at the age of 14, when he painted on metal plates in the workshop of Salim, a local sign painter in Palitana,” says Giulia Ambrogi, co-founder of St+Art India and Gallery XXL, now based in Brazil, who co-curated the exhibition with Sara Malik in Delhi. “Those early experiences laid the foundation for his deep relationship with typography.” When Qureshi realized the art form was fading, he started The Handpainted Type Project, inviting sign painters from across the country to write every letter and number, A to Z, 1 to 9, which he then digitally transformed and remixed.

Patience, Home, Surur On XXL | Photo Credit: Zahra

of lines and letter forms

1,500 sq. ft. inside Gallery XXL. space, Painter Qureshi The series hangs like a meditation on form itself: type without function, letters free of meaning. Neon, lines and shadows are reminiscent of reflective stickers and fading shops. Many of the paintings are titled after the cities he visited, such as Mandawa, Banaras, Modhera, Udaipur – places that remain more in color than in picture.

Painter Qureshi The chain hangs on the form itself like a meditation. Photo Credits: Estate of Hanif Qureshi and courtesy of Gallery XXL

Painter Qureshi The series’ neon, lines and shadows are reminiscent of reflective stickers and fading shops. Photo Credit: Zahra

Language, too, became material, particularly Urdu, a language he could not speak but was attracted to throughout his life because of its beautiful shapes and flowing letters. In a series of aluminum wall sculptures, Qureshi reimagines words patience (Patience), Home (home and Suroor (Happiness) as forms. Malik says, “Hanif played many roles as artist, designer, teacher and mentor to many. He was always moving forward, creating, experimenting.” “That was his patienceHis tenacity. he built a HomeWherever he went, there was a home for artists and that’s what brought him there SuroorThese words fit beautifully with who he was, so we named the show after him,”

a collage Patience, at home, in front
Photo Credit: Gallery XXL

then there is tetrisA series where character forms appear like falling blocks, half game, half code, perhaps a nod to the video games he loved. “They were made during his time in Uppsala, Sweden, where it was shown,” says Malik. “We don’t know why he called it that. Some of his paintings are untitled; others are based on architecture – concrete-like, almost Brutalist – like letters pushed into three-dimensional shapes. He kept this part of his practice very private.”

tetris Series (2024) | Photo Credit: Estate of Hanif Qureshi and Courtesy of Wildstyle Gallery

A new node for street art

“Since we came together in 2014, we have been able to generate real interest in street art,” says Arjun Bahl, co-founder of St+Art India and Gallery XXL. “Now, we want to create a marketplace around it. That means exhibitions, but also a collectible shop that we create together with the artists, and bring them in for workshops and residencies, so they can test ideas and use the space as they wish.”

After Qureshi’s demise, Bahl and his fellow co-founders, Ambrogi and Thanish Thomas, decided to shift the gallery from Mumbai to Delhi. “We’re a small, guerrilla-style team, and we depend on each other,” he says. “While XXL in Mumbai kept it close to Hanif’s later years in Goa, Delhi has always been home for us. Most of us live here, so it only makes sense to return.”

Hanif Qureshi’s secret (2023, UV print on ACP) | Photo Credits: Estate of Hanif Qureshi and courtesy of Gallery XXL

Just a stone’s throw from Delhi’s Lodhi Art District, a neighborhood transformed into India’s first open-air art district under the St+Art Foundation, Gallery XXL is now carrying on that legacy. Part studio, part gallery, part meeting ground, the space is a new hub for street art, showcasing the works of over 40 artists from India and abroad, many of whom are Qureshi’s long-time collaborators. This is once again the beginning of a new chapter in art making for all.

The show is on XXL till November 30.

Culture writer and editor specializing in reporting on art, design and architecture.

published – November 20, 2025 03:45 PM IST