Raseel Gujral Ansal's 'Is This My Circus' in New Delhi is an immersive dialogue between art, legacy and performance

The Travancore Palace in New Delhi gets transformed 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.

Is This My Circus, an immersive art exhibition by Raseel Gujral Ansal

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; and 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.

The exhibition is on till September 28 at The Travancore Palace, New Delhi.

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