Shared Stories Now unfolds as a contemporary echo—and an active extension—of the multilayered narratives articulated by Shared Stories, the ongoing exhibition at the Humayun’s Tomb Museum in New Delhi. If the historical exhibition reveals the deep entanglements of cultures, forms, and knowledge systems across Eurasia, Shared Stories Now brings that logic into the present, testing how such entanglements continue to operate within contemporary artistic practices.
Curated by the Italian Embassy Culture Centre in New Delhi on the occasion of India Art Fair 2026, this group exhibition proposes the present as a space of resonance rather than rupture. Here, history is not a closed chapter but a living archive—one that contemporary artists consult, reinterpret, and transform. The exhibition foregrounds dialogue: between India and Italy, between different generations of artists, and between diverse materials, media, and conceptual approaches.
The works presented do not illustrate history; instead, they think with it. They engage with memory, landscape, architecture, the circulation of images, the politics of ornament, and the poetics of everyday life. In doing so, they mirror the layered narratives of Shared Stories, translating its historical depth into contemporary vocabularies that are at once intimate and global.
Artists such as Dayanita Singh and Francesco Simeti and Avinash Veeraraghavan explore the mutable nature of archives and images; Imran Qureshi and Stefano Arienti reflect on mark-making as both gesture and residue; Elisabetta Di Maggio engages time through repetition, fragility, faith, and labor, Neeraj Patel’s practice introduces a reflection on abstraction as a site of cultural memory, where geometry, materiality, and perception become tools to negotiate continuity and change. Arshad Hakim’s works resonate with the historical layers of Delhi itself, revealing collective narratives over time. Ayesha Singh, question inherited forms and symbols, while Stefania Galegati, Raw Material, and Thukral and Tagra interrogate the economic, social, and cultural systems that shape contemporary life. Together, their works form a constellation rather than a linear narrative, one in which meanings emerge through proximity, contrast, and mutual illumination.
Shared Stories Now is conceived as an “insert”: not an addendum, but an active interface between past and present. It extends the historical inquiry of the Humayun’s Tomb Museum into the contemporary world, suggesting that cultural exchange is not a legacy to be preserved but a process to be continually reactivated. In this sense, the exhibition affirms the contemporary as a site where histories are not only remembered, but re-written—collectively, dialogically, and in the present tense.
Time: Tue-Sun 10:00 am to 5:30 pm (Monday closed)