Is This My Circus? by Raseel Gujral Ansal

"This September, the Travancore Palace in New Delhi will transform into a stage for Is This My Circus?, an immersive exhibition by multi-disciplinary designer and artist Raseel Gujral Ansal. Conceived as a living question, the showcase blurs the boundaries between imagination and reality, authorship and surrender, tradition and technology.

At its heart lies Raseel’s artworks, presented under her symbolic signature Sifar. Beginning as dreams - vivid, layered with memory and intuition - these visions are first explored in dialogue with AI, where unexpected images emerge like fragments of a subconscious circus. With her team, Raseel refines these concepts before entrusting them to master artisans, who translate them into hand-rendered watercolours and sculptural forms. Each work is marked with Sifar — not a claim of ownership but a seal of humility and collaboration, an emblem of infinite possibility that reimagines her father’s Urdu signature as a contemporary act of co-creation.

Welcoming visitors into the palace are the Devi, Diva, and Damsel sculptures, three commanding archetypes of the feminine that embody divinity, spectacle and vulnerability. Each stands as both muse and question, reflecting the paradox of power and fragility within the circus of life. Within the exhibition itself, stories unfold like vignettes: My Raj, a meditation on identity and independence; War of the Roses, a satirical tableau where civility masks rivalry; Diamonds Are Forever, a cinematic homage to espionage and subterfuge; Brothers in Arms, a playful reflection on camaraderie and conquest; Birds of a Feather, a rakish exploration of vanity and wit; His Master’s Voice, an inversion of dominance and desire; Rose Tinted Glasses, a whimsical yet poignant ode to denial. Each piece becomes both a performance and a provocation, asking the viewer: are we ringmasters of our stories, or simply performers within them?

In a deeply personal gesture, Raseel situates her own works in dialogue with those of her father, the legendary artist Satish Gujral. From her private collection, she presents four of his works — powerful evocations of vitality, instinct, and survival that recall both the freedom and constraint of creatures within the circus. These works stand as a tribute, threading legacy into the present and underscoring humanity’s timeless entanglement with nature.

Completing the triad of voices in this exhibition are six sculptural monkeys by Ketan Amin — playful figures that mirror human contradictions while resisting domestication. Tricksters and truthtellers, they serve as both participants and commentators in the unfolding spectacle, their mischief reminding us of the absurdity of control and the freedom of questioning.

Together, Raseel’s visionary works, Satish Gujral’s commanding bestiary and Ketan Amin’s simians create a multi-layered dialogue across generations, mediums and sensibilities. Is This My Circus? is not simply an exhibition but a theatre of paradox, where masks slip and roles collide, where divinity meets vulnerability and where the artist herself asks whether she is ringmaster or monkey or perhaps both."

We had a quick chat with Raseel, where she elaborated on the thought process behind her curation, the title of the exhibition, and what ties it all together.
“The ideation itself took a year and a half, beginning with an interaction with AI. This interaction was then brought into reality and taken into a graphic studio to add elements that tied the story together in a very specific way. Timeless value is created by human beings, and we have been working with miniature artists in Jaipur who have painted the works over the past year and a half.
The title is a question I am asking. While speaking to a friend about the overarching theme that connected all the pieces, she said it is like your circus. I then asked myself, is this my circus, since I am not the one who has painted it. Sifar is a combination of my mind, AI, the graphic studio, and the artisans. Only then does the whole collective come together, so it is not my circus, it is our circus. This also led me to ask how to include other artists. I saw Khetan’s monkeys at the art fair two years ago and fell in love.
I love the form of the monkey. The use of monkeys is almost like a mask. They are so close to humans, but not quite. As a result, you do not attribute personality to them, and this allows you to tell a story more freely.”

Presented from 24th to 28th September 2025 at The Travancore Palace, New Delhi, Is This My Circus? is an invitation to enter a world where art, design and performance entwine and where every creation is less a possession than a shared act of imagination, signed not in ownership but in Sifar, a seal of infinite possibility.

Date 26-09-2025