Over more than seven decades, Satish Gujral built one of the most extraordinary multidisciplinary practices in modern Indian art. While his evocative Partition works remain among the defining images of twentieth-century India and projects such as the Belgian Embassy established his architectural legacy, together they represent a practice that was far more expansive than any single medium or movement.
In celebration of Satish Gujral’s
Centennial Exhibition at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai,
this conversation brings together diverse perspectives on the relationship
between his artworks and architectural projects, and considers how ideas,
materials, and forms moved across his practice. It will reflect on architecture
as a parallel pursuit and an extension of Gujral’s artistic imagination, while
also turning to lesser-known works and the curatorial decisions involved in
presenting an artist of such breadth to contemporary audiences. What happens
when architecture is exhibited alongside paintings, drawings, and sculptures?
How can archives, scholarship, and curatorial research reshape public
understanding of an artist a century after his birth?
Join us for an evening of
conversation as we revisit how Satish Gujral’s art and architecture continue to
shape the understanding of modern Indian cultural history.
Vishal K. Dar is an artist/architect whose work displays an artful approach to the use of digital technologies that explores - through site-specific installation/sculpture/video - traditional definitions of art, performance and architecture. Rather than portraying figurative objects, his work focuses primarily on the place-making, which emanate from the inherent characteristics of the material, site and context. Dar was the curator of the recently concluded Sa biennale, 2026 in Ladakh, India.
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Ranjit Hoskote is a poet, cultural theorist and curator. His recent collections of poetry include Central Time (Penguin, 2014), Jonahwhale (Penguin, 2018), Hunchprose (Penguin, 2021), and Icelight (Wesleyan University Press, 2023). He is co-editor of two anthologies, Future Publics (Valiz, 2015) and Practices of Hope (Niyogi, 2026). Hoskote has been a fellow of the International Writing Program, University of Iowa; associate fellow of Sarai-CSDS at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi; writer-in-residence at Villa Waldberta, Munich, the Polish Institute, Berlin, and the Fremantle Biennale; and researcher-in-residence at BAK/ basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht. Hoskote curated India’s first-ever national pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2011) and was co-curator, with Okwui Enwezor and Hyunjin Kim, of the 7th Gwangju Biennale. He has served on the Jury of the Venice Biennale (2015), was a curatorial advisor to the Venice Biennale (2022), and participated in collaboration with Rahul Mehrotra in the Venice Biennale of Architecture (2023). He is a founding member of the Advisory Board of the Bergen Assembly, Norway, and serves on the Advisory Board of the Public Arts Trust of India (PATI) and on the Editorial Board of the Murty Classical Library of India, published by Harvard University Press. Hoskote is one of the six inaugural fellows of the Georgetown Global Dialogues program, established by Georgetown University, Washington DC. He co-convened the conference, Architecture: A Radical Contextuality (Mumbai, March 2026) and his most recent curatorial project is Contextures: RMA and the Practice of Embedded Architecture (TARQ, 2026)
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Mrinalini Ghadiok is an architect, design writer, editor, and cultural innovator with over two decades of experience spanning architecture, publishing, and public discourse. Earlier in her career, Ghadiok was the editor of mondo*arc india and STIR, where she helped establish a rigorous and distinctive editorial voice. More recently, she has worked independently with leading architecture and design practices, institutions and brands, developing studio and project monographs, shaping communication strategies and conceiving public programmes and conversations that position design within a broader cultural context. She has taught architecture at university level, served on design juries in India and internationally and remains actively engaged with emerging voices in the field.
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Feroze Gujral is a cultural leader and visionary philanthropist with over two decades of experience shaping India’s contemporary art and design landscape. She is the Founder and Director of The Gujral Foundation, a non-profit arts trust established in 2008 with her husband, Mohit Gujral. Through The Gujral Foundation, she and Mohit have nurtured prodigious talent across art, architecture, design, and culture in India and internationally. They are both collectors and patrons; their initiatives span advocacy, curation, and media, with a mission to empower artists, designers, and institutions across the Global South. The foundation also stewards the estate of Satish Gujral, one of India's most celebrated modern artists and architects, preserving and sharing his legacy with future generations. She serves on the Board of Governors of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). She has previously served on the International Director's Council of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, the International Council of the Serpentine Galleries, London, and the Advisory Board of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), New Delhi. She is the founding patron of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale and Colomboscope in Sri Lanka, and a benefactor to institutions including CEPT University and the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), championing interdisciplinary education and cultural exchange across South Asia.
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