October 2026
Ahmedabad Cultural Week
Second Edition
A conversation with curator and director Shristi Sainani about the second edition of ACW, and it’s focus on Climate.
Interview by Dan Golden
Shristi Sainani has been a longtime contributor to Curator and….
—Dan Golden
Congratulations on the second edition of Ahmedabad Cultural Week—can you give us an overview?
Thanks so much, Dan!
The second edition of Ahmedabad Cultural Week (ACW Ed.2) highlights the global climate crisis and its wide-ranging effects on Earth's systems, with 18 venues participating.
India—with its large rural populations, densely populated cities, and extensive coastlines—is especially vulnerable to climate risks. Extreme weather often disrupts agriculture and infrastructure, underscoring the need for long-term adaptation and disaster-management strategies. Through its local governance, Ahmedabad has included a separate climate chapter in its main budget. This year's program spans everything from traditional art spaces—galleries, performance hubs, and art centers—to unconventional foundations that double as schools, nonprofits, and archives. For the first time, it also includes a public space.
Can you step back for a moment and talk about ACW's origins? What was the initial spark?
Ahmedabad is celebrated for its rich history and exquisite traditions in handicrafts and cuisine. The city is designed as a hierarchy of living environments, with streets that also serve as community spaces—reflecting local wisdom and strong community bonds.
Because Ahmedabad is home, we've watched it grow, adding vibrant contemporary spaces with a global outlook. Yet the city remains whole. It has absorbed change and growth while preserving its traditional resilience. We saw the potential for a larger, more comprehensive event that could activate all these spaces at once—and that's what inspired us to start Ahmedabad Cultural Week.
Congratulations on the second edition of Ahmedabad Cultural Week—can you give us an overview?
Thanks so much, Dan!
The second edition of Ahmedabad Cultural Week (ACW Ed.2) highlights the global climate crisis and its wide-ranging effects on Earth's systems, with 18 venues participating.
India—with its large rural populations, densely populated cities, and extensive coastlines—is especially vulnerable to climate risks. Extreme weather often disrupts agriculture and infrastructure, underscoring the need for long-term adaptation and disaster-management strategies. Through its local governance, Ahmedabad has included a separate climate chapter in its main budget. This year's program spans everything from traditional art spaces—galleries, performance hubs, and art centers—to unconventional foundations that double as schools, nonprofits, and archives. For the first time, it also includes a public space.
Can you step back for a moment and talk about ACW's origins? What was the initial spark?
Ahmedabad is celebrated for its rich history and exquisite traditions in handicrafts and cuisine. The city is designed as a hierarchy of living environments, with streets that also serve as community spaces—reflecting local wisdom and strong community bonds.
Because Ahmedabad is home, we've watched it grow, adding vibrant contemporary spaces with a global outlook. Yet the city remains whole. It has absorbed change and growth while preserving its traditional resilience. We saw the potential for a larger, more comprehensive event that could activate all these spaces at once—and that's what inspired us to start Ahmedabad Cultural Week.
What did the first edition teach you that changed how you approached this one?
The first edition had 15 venues, most with their own administrative structures. This year, with 18 venues taking part, we looked for unfamiliar, fresh venues to add novelty, along with a public space.
For future editions, we hope to bring art to the people of Ahmedabad not only through formal art spaces, but also through the city's everyday public spheres—parks, heritage sites, and vernacular or modern buildings that have often been forgotten or neglected.
You're a curator, designer, researcher, writer, and a trained architect. How does that combination shape the way you build something like ACW?
Years of close study across these fields shape every project we take on, including Ahmedabad Cultural Week.
For instance, a completed research paper on inclusivity underpins our venue selection and how we approach programming and outreach. Lessons from architecture and urban planning push us to think about navigation and connectivity—both physical and psychological—within the city. Our curatorial experience lets the project act as a facilitating engine and a network-building agency. At the same time, our deep enthusiasm for private art museums and their economic impact helps us suggest policy changes to the governing bodies that interact with the project.
Walk me through some of this year’s highlights—the exhibitions, performances, or moments people shouldn't miss.
Of course. Here are a few highlights:
Museum of Contemporary Art Ahmedabad—a new private art museum in the city—collaborates with one of India's leading galleries, GALLERYSKE, on I Dwell in Possibility, featuring work by Avinash Veeraraghavan, Buddhadev Mukherjee, Dia Mehta Bhupal, Sudarshan Shetty, Sunil Padwal, and more.
Conflictorium, the Museum of Conflict, uses water as a lens to explore climate change. Its interactive session Jal, aaj... aur kal? ("Water, today and tomorrow?") invites the audience to take part.
Darpana Academy of Performing Arts and Natarani present the Natarani Theatre Festival, including a biography of Amrita Sher-Gil, one of India's most renowned avant-garde women artists.
Iram Art hosts Delhi-based performance artist Murari Jha, who will present a performance in Ahmedabad for the first time.
Kanoria Centre for Arts offers a dynamic program, including Climate Recipes Now, a project by Kiran Nadar Museum of Art curator Srinivas Aditya Mopidevi, and Games People Play 03, an exhibition by Thukral and Tagra presented by Ashvita's Art.
Mehnat Manzil presents a street play that spills into public space, reaching the informal settlements around the museum and engaging them with stories about climate change.
The Sabarmati Riverfront hosts Australian-born, Glasgow-based artist Penny Chivas for an interactive performance on the climate crisis, her first in India, supported by the British Council.
Shreyas Foundation is hosting, for the first time in the city, the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), which is collaborating on a cartoon exhibition for kids, multiple workshops, and talks with leading voices from across the country.
Ahmedabad has such a deep cultural heritage. How do you see ACW contributing to the city's cultural life?
For 10 days, ACW activates the city's contemporary art spaces with high-quality exhibitions and programs, drawing large audiences and sparking real conversations around contemporary art. We want to connect international and national voices with the organizations rooted here, and bring visitors to Ahmedabad for the Week.
Looking ahead, where do you want to take ACW next?
As we move from one edition to the next, we hope ACW becomes a larger citywide activation that brings art to people—not just through white cube and black box presentations, but by spilling into streets and energizing easy-to-access public spaces. We see bringing new work into heritage spaces as a way to promote inclusivity and community building. Longer term, we hope to nurture Ahmedabad's art scene through residencies based outside the city.
DG: Tell me about the materials you work with—I was reading you use a blowtorch?
RB: It started as an experiment in drawing through destruction—painting a light color under a dark color, then wiping away the dark layer with fire to create an interesting, organic line as the paint accumulates and wears away.
I think of my studio as a wacky laboratory. One day I’ll be mixing all these different potions, pigments, and mediums, and something will mutate and bubble up. Hopefully it will be something new, never seen before.
DG: I love the idea of your studio as a laboratory. What inspired you to start making your own paint versus going out and getting some Gamblin?
RB: Well, I do that, too. I mix regular paint into mine as a binder, so it holds together and conserves. I’ve always been interested in how paint captures and reflects light. In graduate school, I watched videos of Richard Serra throwing molten lead, and that inspired me to mix graphite into my paint to give the paintings a kind of shine. It’s a kind of miracle how certain pigment blends do what they do.
It’s almost like the awe, the divinity in a way, the grace of when you look into the sky, and you feel the infiniteness of everything and the beauty. So I use that metaphorically as the image of light coming out of the dark. I always start with dark, and I go toward the light.
DG: I like that—it’s positive.
“I think of my studio as a wacky laboratory. One day I’ll be mixing all these different potions, pigments, and mediums, and something will mutate and bubble up. Hopefully it will be something new, never seen before.”
“We all find moments of joy. We all find moments of relief. We all try our best to make things have meaning. That’s the light through the dark.”
Ahmedabad Cultural Week
Second Edition
Ahmedabad, India
October 23—November 1, 2026