17 – 18 January 2026 | Colombo, Sri Lanka

TAKE on Art magazine and KALĀ South Asia bring together exhibitions, performances, and conversations on contemporary artistic practice across South Asia and its diasporas.

The year 2026 perpetuates the collaborative ethos of TAKE on Art, shaped by historical and political contexts that enable it to move between aspirations of shared creativity and the cautionary weight of collective memory. The forthcoming 33rd issue, TAKE Collaboration, foregrounds joint endeavours as a means to emphasise ethical responsibility, mutual accountability and creative authorship. This year begins with the conceptual programme Shared Ground: South Asia in Conversation, a collaborative initiative led by TAKE on Art and KALĀ. It is a reminder, collaboration, not bracketed to procedural but relational, is contingent on the balance of individual agency with collective intention: in pursuit of shared aims within evolved social conditions, locally as well as globally. These interactions bring together exhibitions, performances, and public conversations that explore contemporary artistic practices across South Asia and its diasporas.

In a moment marked by heightened regional and global connectivity with exponential digital transformation, collaborative approaches of Shared Ground: South Asia in Conversation offer necessary collective ways of vital artistic and cultural methods. Within this framework, the programme is understood more than a singular object of isolated authorship, as a process of encounter, dialogue and co-creation. In the complex and plural contexts of South Asia, where artistic practice is deeply entangled with religion, politics and everyday life, collaboration becomes a means of negotiating difference, building solidarities and sustaining cultural relationships across borders and communities.  Extending this conversation further, Shared Ground: South Asia in Conversation reimagines the art world as a breathing ecology of relationships: one in which creativity, care and collective purpose coexist and flourish.

PARTICIPANTS

Ahmed Rasel (Bangladesh) | Bhavna Kakar (India) | Dilpreet Bhullar (India) | Eagan Badeeu (Maldives) | Farhat Ali (Pakistan) | Firi Rahman (Sri Lanka) | Gopa Trivedi (India) | Hamra Abbas (Pakistan) | Hasini Haputhanthri (Sri Lanka) | Indira Kithsiri (Sri Lanka / Switzerland) | Kailash K. Shrestha (Nepal) | Khadim Ali (Afghanistan) | Kiran Maharjan (Nepal) | Kishwar Kiani (Pakistan) | Marie Gnanaraja (Sri Lanka) | Mayank Mansingh Kaul (India) | Phurba Namgay (Bhutan) | Pradeep Thalawatta (Sri Lanka) | Pujan Gandhi (India) | Richi K. Bhatia (UAE) | Tanya Dutt (India) | Tashi Lama (Nepal) | Vibha Galhotra (India)

17 JANUARY | 11 AM -3 PM

Of Mirage and Mirror: Passage on Photography

Workshop on Photography Writing by Dilpreet Bhullar, Managing Editor of TAKE on Art Magazine

17 JANUARY | 6 PM onwards

Introduction to TAKE on Art Magazine by Bhavna Kakar, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher

Curatorial Walkthrough with Tanya Dutt, Consulting Editor of TAKE on Art Magazine

Live Performance by Richi K. Bhatia: Performative Work engaging Body, Material, Myth and Gender through Sensory Interaction

18 JANUARY | 11.30 AM

Panel Discussion: Ripple Sail for Reconciliation

On Memory, Domestic Space, Personal Histories and Reconciliation across South Asia

Panellists: Hamra Abbas | Hasini Haputhanthri | Pradeep Thalawatta | Gopa Trivedi

Moderator: Puja Vaish

18 JANUARY | 3.30 PM

Panel Discussion: Carriers of Creative Force

On Material Heritage, Collecting, Public Art and Contemporary South Asian Creativity

Panellists: Indira Kithsiri | Vibha Galhotra | Mayank Mansingh Kaul | Firi Rahman | Kailash K. Shrestha

Moderator: Pujan Gandhi

18 JANUARY – 15 FEBRUARY | 10 AM- 6 PM

Shared Ground: South Asia in Conversation

Exhibition Features both established and mid-career artists whose practices are internationally recognised and deeply rooted in socio-political, post-colonial, ecological and material research 

ARTISTS:

Ahmed Rasel (Bangladesh) | Eagan Badeeu (Maldives) | Farhat Ali (Pakistan) | Firi Rahman (Sri Lanka) | Gopa Trivedi (India) | Khadim Ali (Afghanistan) | Kiran Maharjan (Nepal) | Kishwar Kiani (Pakistan) | Marie Gnanaraja (Sri Lanka) | Phurba Namgay (Bhutan) | Tashi Lama (Nepal) | Vibha Galhotra (India)