Explore Mumbai’s must-see 2025 art show featuring 25 contemporary Indian artists navigating themes of transformation, ecology and resilience, on view at Space11.
There’s something quietly radical about Edge of Space, this year’s fundraiser exhibition by Space118 Art Foundation in Mumbai. Founded by Saloni Doshi, Space118 has long held space for emerging and underrepresented voices in the Indian art world, offering more than just visibility. It offers momentum. The fundraiser, on view from August 2 to 16, 2025, is a vital part of this mission: it supports the Space118 Fine Arts Grant, which provides both financial assistance and mentorship to early-career artists across India.
However, Edge of Space is not simply a charitable event. It feels alive with urgency, vulnerability and a deep questioning spirit. Curated around the idea of liminality—of standing on a threshold between collapse and transformation—the exhibition brings together 25 artists working across diverse mediums: Akshata Mokashi, Barkha Gupta, Deepanjali Shekhar, Dheeraj Yadav, Dilipkumar Kesavan, Hansika Sharma, Hasmukh Makwana, Jyoti Singh, Khanjan Maru, Kopal Seth, Manjit Gogoi, Mousumi Rajak, Neha Verma, Nitish Sharma, Payal Rajput, Pratap Manna, Ratna Bardhan, Ruchita Madhok, Shanmuk Tamada, Suhani Jain, Tanjima Kar Sekh, Trapti Porwal, Vaibhav More, Vipul Badav and Yogesh Murkute.
Each of them approaches this moment in time with a different urgency. Some turn their attention outward, towards environmental degradation, urban change, or social instability. Others explore more interior landscapes: personal mythologies, intergenerational memory, or the quiet residue of isolation. What ties these works together is a shared feeling of grappling, with uncertainty, with loss, and with the possibility of making something new from the wreckage.
The preview night on August 2nd had a gentle, attentive buzz. At Space118’s Mazgaon space, viewers moved slowly, taking in works that didn’t scream for attention but invited a deeper kind of looking. A cracked canvas evoked parched land and climate grief. A delicate installation held the tension between tenderness and violence. Sculptural works blurred the line between ruin and ritual. Rather than delivering statements, these pieces posed questions about care, survival, and the fragile architectures we build to carry both.
In the shadow of the pandemic and the disruptions it caused, not just to exhibition calendars but to the very rhythm of making and sharing, this show feels like a stitching back together. Edge of Space doesn’t try to gloss over the fractures; it sits within them. And this, perhaps, is its greatest strength.
The exhibition also embodies a practical generosity. Half of all proceeds go directly to the artists, while the other half supports the Space118 Fine Arts Grant, which provides financial assistance along with mentorship from senior artists and curators. There’s a temptation to view fundraisers as transactional: art as a means to an end. But Edge of Space pushes back against that notion. Here, support feels like a form of solidarity. Participation—as a viewer, buyer, or simply witness—feels like joining a larger conversation about how art can respond to the moment we’re living in.
And maybe that’s what the title gestures toward. The ‘edge’ isn’t an end, but a beginning. A quiet tilt toward something yet to come. In these works—unfinished, searching, full of care—we glimpse that future. Not as a destination, but as an invitation.
On till August 16, 11 am to 5 pm. At Space118 Art Foundation, Mazgaon, Mumbai.
(Written by Esha Aphale)
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