Sifr at Exhibit 320

New Delhi-based contemporary art gallery Exhibit 320 announces Sifr, a solo exhibition by artist, scholar, and educator Gunjan Chawla Kumar. Opening on Thursday, 11th December 2025, the show will be on view until Thursday, 15th January 2026. Sifr brings together an extensive body of work that reflects Kumar’s long-standing engagement with material history, metaphysics, and the elemental relationship between matter and movement.
 
Shaped by years of travel across India and South Asia, Gunjan Chawla Kumar’s recent practice spans archaeological sites, prehistoric art, indigenous crafts, and traditional textiles, deepening her engagement with material histories. In Sifr, she presents over 60 works in muslin, paper and pigment that explore presence and absence, extending these foundations into a meditation on zero as both void and vessel, stillness and motion.
 
“Sifr, for me, is the point where material and spirit collapse into one another,” shares artist Gunjan Chawla Kumar. “It is an attempt to listen to matter at its most elemental: pigment, earth, fibre, and to allow each gesture to reveal what lies between presence and erasure. In these repetitions, I look for the moment where a form becomes a movement, and a movement becomes a thought.”

Working with natural pigments, handwoven cotton, clay from North India, and river sediments from Chicago, Kumar creates drawings, paintings, and sculptures that distil her experiences into the granular life of pigment. The exhibition highlights her exploration of primary forms, particularly the cone, whose spiralling structure embodies movement and continuity.
 
A Delhi-based curator and writer, Anushka Rajendran situates Sifr within wider inquiries into simultaneity, motion, and the ethics of looking, framing Kumar’s work as one that enacts historical processes while engaging with contemporary urgencies. “Gunjan’s practice embodies the kind of material and conceptual rigour that aligns closely with Exhibit 320’s vision”, says Rasika Kajaria, Founder-Director, Exhibit 320. “Sifr brings together her years of research, travel, and experimentation into a language that is both meditative and expansive.”
 
Reflecting a world in flux, Sifr turns repetition into both resistance and renewal. Turmeric, indigo, and vermilion, materials shaped by gendered labour, are abstracted into pure pigment, their transformation revealing the restless, uncontainable spirit of zero. Positioned between Art Mumbai and the upcoming AD Design Show, the exhibition reflects Exhibit 320’s ongoing investment in thoughtful, research-driven programming.

About Gunjan Chawla Kumar:
Gunjan Chawka Kumar (b. 1980) is an India-born, Chicago-based artist, independent scholar, and educator whose research-driven practice draws from archaeological sites, indigenous craft traditions, and prehistoric painting. Trained in Textiles at the National Institute of Design and Technology, New Delhi, she works with natural pigments, handwoven cotton, clay, and earth sediments to create drawings, paintings, and sculptural forms that explore the elemental relationships between matter, memory, and metaphysics. Her work has been exhibited at the South Asia Institute, the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, the Donnelley Foundation, the Chicago Artist Coalition, the National College of Arts (Lahore), and the India Art Fair, and she has lectured widely on natural pigments and material histories across cultures.
 
Text Anushka Rajendran
Date 8-12-2025