Installation view of Threads of Tradition: framed zardozi embroideries after Thota Vaikuntam paintings hung on deep red gallery walls

Exhibitions

Threads of Tradition, New Delhi

  1. Jalsa exhibition poster: a painting of a musician in a red turban playing a brass instrument against a dark ground, with the Jalsa wordmark

    2026

    Jalsa

    The Arts House, Old Parliament House, Singapore 1 – 8 March 2026

    Jalsa – a celebration in its truest sense – brings together a vibrant group of modern and contemporary Indian artists to Singapore, creating a shared space where colour, memory, skill, and imagination meet. Rooted in the many languages of Indian art and culture, the exhibition unfolds like a gathering: spirited, layered, and alive with dialogue across generations and mediums.

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  2. Sculpted Voices: Generations in Dialogue exhibition poster with a dark veined-marble abstract standing sculpture on an off-white ground

    2025

    Sculpted Voices: Generations in Dialogue

    Ojas Art, 1AQ, New Delhi 25 December 2025 – 26 February 2026

    This exhibition brings together a distinguished group of modern and contemporary Indian artists whose practices illuminate the depth, diversity, and enduring strength of sculptural expression in the country. Spanning generations, they work with materials as elemental as stone, wood, bronze, and stainless-steel wire, transforming each into forms that speak to history, identity, and the evolving language of abstraction and figuration.

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  3. Three Moderns exhibition poster: a Thota Vaikuntam bronze head with a white turban and yellow-painted forehead on a pedestal, with the artists’ names Krishen Khanna, Himmat Shah and Thota Vaikuntam

    2025

    Three Moderns

    India International Centre, New Delhi 11 – 22 December 2025

    In the coming together of three of India’s moderns, this mélange of sculptures gives form to the beauty of the human figure and face, as well as to imagined encounters with the rituals of everyday living.

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  4. Zardozi embroidery after a Thota Vaikuntam painting, from Threads of Tradition: three Telangana women in red, green and yellow saris and a man in a blue turban playing a flute, with green parrots

    2025

    Threads of Tradition

    New Delhi 6 – 30 November 2025

    Threads of Tradition is a groundbreaking artistic endeavour that translates Thota Vaikuntam’s iconic paintings into exquisite three-dimensional zardozi embroidery. This extraordinary body of work represents a historic convergence between Vaikuntam’s celebrated vision of rural Telangana and the centuries-old mastery of India’s most revered zardozi craftsmen.

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  5. Alchemies of Form exhibition banner: a painted Thota Vaikuntam head beside the Saffronart 25 years mark and the dates 30 January – 9 February 2025

    2025

    Alchemies of Form

    Bikaner House, Pandara Road, New Delhi 30 January – 9 February 2025

    Saffronart presents an outdoor exhibition of monumental sculptures by Krishen Khanna, Himmat Shah, Thota Vaikuntam, Dhananjay Singh, Phaneendra Nath Chaturvedi, and Yashika Sugandh. Curated by Uma Nair, this exhibition brings iconic figures of modern Indian art into conversation with contemporary artists, situated amidst nature and built forms, breaking the confines of traditional galleries.

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I’ve taken from my people in Telangana. I draw them. I take my colours from them. I’ve taken details from their everyday lives, stylised them, and made them look grand. That’s my intention.

Thota Vaikuntam