Bharti Kher’s “Giai” in the V&A courtyard. Photo: John ElliottThe timing has not been coincidental. Attracted by cricket at Lords and the Wimbledon fortnight, Indians flock to London in July, many looking to buy art, boosting demand from the South Asian diaspora. But it must break records for Sotheby’s and Christie’s both to open major exhibitions within three days of each other and then for the Victoria and Albert Museum to unveil sculptures by a leading Indian artist.The auction houses are reflecting the current boom in South Asian modern art that has been evident in London with numerous exhibitions. Sotheby’s show is mostly for sale, while Christie’s, which is only for display, is a stepping stone for Delhi’s Kiran Nadar Museum of Modern Art to become a leading international institution.Called The Meeting Ground, it is the latest in Christie’s annual summer series and is probably South Asian art’s most substantial and wide-ranging display ever held in the UK. With a total of 180 works by 67 artists, it beats the 1982 Contemporary Indian Art exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts that was held as part of the UK’s Festival of India with 45 artists and 133 works.“International engagement is a pillar of our vision, opening up new frameworks for dialogue and scholarship,” says Kiran Nadar, the museum’s founder.The V&A motivation is more prosaic. Its South Asian gallery is closed for renovation till 2028, so it will be staging regular exhibitions to bridge the gap. This week’s opening consisted of four sculptures by Bharti Kher, a prominent Indian artist, who was born in south London and lives between here and Delhi.Bharti Kher’s “Warrior with Cloud and Shield” at the V&A. Photo: John ElliottHer newest work, Gaia, that was completed this year, has the prime spot of the V&A’s entrance courtyard. Described as a hybrid Mother Earth goddess, Gaia stands four metres high and depicts a female warrior with a house on her head, inspired by small clay sculptures known as Gulu figurines that are displayed in South Indian homes during festivals.In the main sculpture gallery, three of Kher’s works blend casually but strikingly with centuries old, mostly white, revered monuments, busts and statues. One of the three, titled Ghost (2024), shows a translucent shroud or sari enclosing a female figure.Animus Mundi (2018), which was included in the artist’s large exhibition that ran in Wakefield’s Yorkshire Sculpture Park till April last year, is an armless female body with a buffalo head. The oldest work, the golden Warrior with Cloud and Shield (2008), stands triumphantly at the end of the gallery looking both powerful and fragile.“When the Thing with Feathers Turned Red (after Tintoretto)” – by Kashmiri artist Raqib Shaw (2021-22) – depicting fires in Srinagar and the artist’s London studio. Photo: Raqib Shaw and KGMA“Sculpture is an animist force with energy,” says Kher, who describes such figures as “mythical urban goddesses, creatures who came out of femininity and the idea of womanhood”.Christie’s handed all its Mayfair headquarters’ galleries to five of the KNMA’s curators led by Akansha Rastogi, an associate director. The works, dating from 1950, were transported from Delhi and will return there after the exhibition closes on August 21. About 50% of them have not been seen publicly since they entered Nadar’s collection.Nadar started buying art in 1990, and the KNMA was established in 2010. A new museum with over 1m sq ft (approx 93,000 sq metres) of space is being built near Delhi airport, transforming what started as a personal hobby into an internationally significant institution.“The vision is to have South Asian art on a global platform, making it accessible to all, not just in South Asia but globally,” explains Deepanjana Klein, KNMA’s acquisitions and development director, who earlier headed the subcontinent at Christie’s. The new museum would be the world’s “greatest South Asian art institution,” and the Christie’s exhibition was part of an effort to “build an international audience”.A video titled “Interference” by L.N.Tallur (2019) depicting a carpet over 200 years old from the Junagadh Museum in Gujarat being beaten to extract years of dust – questioning such abrasive restoration, or destruction.The exhibition consists of five interconnected scenes tracing “themes of memory, migration, labour, borders, body and camaraderie” with works ranging from modern and contemporary to folk and tribal.At the start, aside from a large and colourful gallery of the most famous auction-topping artists such as M.F.Husain and F.N.Souza, there is a sense of rebellion against destruction of human habitats, demonstrated in various ways.Three works by M.F.Husain at Christie’s.Sudhir Patwardhan, a well-known chronicler of Mumbai life has his The Clearing (2007) on show, depicting open land being swallowed by the relentlessly expanding urban sprawl. Montages of photos by Gauri Gill overlaid with ink drawings by Rajesh C. Vangad show scenes such as Factory and River (above) that depicts an industrial complex encroaching on indigenous peoples’ land.Other artists follow a similar theme which includes Warli indigenous art from Maharashtra. That blends in another part of the exhibition with Gond tribal art from Madhya Pradesh, notably by the most famous Gond, Jangarh Singh Shyam.F.N.Souza’s “Crucifixion”. Photo: Alkazi CollectionChristie’s displays various artists in each gallery to develop its themes, whereas Sotheby’s focuses on a single artist in each of its sections.Called The South Asia Edit, Sotheby’s has works for sale by five famous artists that span painting, printmaking, sculpture and ceramics, plus four works that are not for sale by F.N.Souza, the famous Progressive, from the respected but rarely seen Alkazi Collection in Delhi.Souza’s dominant work is Crucifixion (1984), a 93in x 54in acrylic on canvas. He has painted this subject several times and he is usually seen as a critic and angry rebel against the Roman Catholic Church, in which he was raised in Goa. He has however given himself a religious role as the priest serving communion in Crucifixion, with his hands showing the wounds of Christ hanging on the cross behind. One interpretation is that this shows Souza’s more tolerant view of religion later in his life, though his face has a rather questioning look that contrasts and maybe lacks respect for what is happening.The works of four of the other five artists come from their estates’ collections, providing strong provenance since they will have never been to the market. The artists are India’s Bhupen Khakhar and Mohan Samant, along with husband and wife Zahoor ul Akhlaq and Sherezade Alam from Pakistan whose works have been curated by Amrita Jhaveri of Jhaveri Contemporary. Then there is Indian-American Zarina with works from various private collections.Bhupen Khakhar’s untitled work (1988) 37×37 inch oil on canvas.The focal point for Bhupen Khakhar, India’s most prominent gay painter, is an untitled 36in x 36in oil on canvas (1988). Believed to be priced at £2m, it depicts in classic Khakhar style two men embracing with a rural landscape in the background. More interesting though is a fascinatingly wide range of Khakhar’s drawings, etchings and prints that have never been seen before, many but not all with gay themes.The works by Mohan Samant include the artists’ famous music and dance series, while Zarina has a range of printmaking, collages, and sculpture using handmade paper, woodcuts mixed with pewter and gold leaf. Sheherezade Alam’s show consists of 32 small ceramics while Zahoor ul Akhlaq has a range of brightly coloured acrylics and other works.Mohan Samant’s “Kathakali Dancer” (1990), 67×60 inch oil, spackle, wire and mixed media on canvas.Manjari Sihari-Sutin, who heads South Asian art at Sotheby’s suggests that a for-sale exhibition gives buyers, including top collectors, a chance to acquire instantly instead of maybe losing at an auction. For sellers, prices could be higher because estimates were often pitched low in auction catalogues to draw in bidders.This has been a hectic five weeks of Indian and other South Asian art in London. It followed on from a Saffronart auction in April, when two Indian tycoons created an $18m record for a single Indian work of art at auction, and began with Christie’s $25m sale of the Bengal-based Goodricke collection by the Camellia group.Next came the opening of the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Hayward Gallery and then the London galleries’ weekend splurge of events with mention of the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield. Now there are this past week’s wide-ranging openings that are notable, like the galleries’ weekend, for the growing recognition of work from Pakistan and other parts of South Asia as well as India.John Elliot is a semi-retired British journalist, and blogger and author at Riding the Elephant.This article is republished from Riding the Elephant. Read the original article.