From monumental installations to intimate works, discover how art finds its place across the spaces of NMACC.
Art, when made accessible, has the power to start conversations; to make everyone stop and ponder over colour, brushstroke and the artistic vision of its makers. At the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre, art extends beyond the gallery walls, unfolding across plazas, lobbies, passageways and gathering spaces. Bringing together works by Indian and international artists, the collection transforms the act of moving through the building into an opportunity to encounter art in unexpected ways.
Where the Journey Begins
Mumbai-based artist Jitish Kallat sets the tone at the entrance with Here After Here After Here. The 12-metre installation transforms familiar road signage into a measure of distance, extending the language of the road to cities, planets and galaxies. Positioned within the bustle of Jio World Centre, the work offers a compelling meditation on the city and its places within a much larger universe.
Craftsmanship Close to Home
The centre’s commitment to Indian artistic traditions is reflected in works that bring craft, material and collective practice into a public setting. The 56-foot Kamal Kunj, created by veteran Nathdwara Pichwai master Raghunandan Sharma and his team, translates a devotional temple tradition onto a monumental scale using natural pigments and gold foil.
Mumbai-based artist Reena Kallat’s Closet Quarries I and II draws on the visual language of Mughal inlay while incorporating the humble rubber stamp to re-inscribe names of people and places that have faded from collective memory.
Subodh Gupta’s Kingdom of Earth reimagines the ancient Greek Delos Gate as a symbol of cultural exchange. Constructed from stainless steel and broken ceramic plates, and featuring a life-sized white elephant, the work reflects labour, memory, migration and displacement through the histories embedded in everyday materials.
A very different vision of nature emerges in Thukral & Tagra’s Arboretum I. Drawing from the artists’ documentation of more than 60 floral species across India’s biological parks and reserves, the surrealist oil on canvas brings together strange flowers, skyscrapers and hybrid musical instruments.
Tanya Goel’s Mechanism 12 shifts the focus from the natural world to the structures that shape contemporary life. Combining charcoal, concrete, glass, soil, mica, graphite and construction materials, Goel creates a tension between order and chaos, with fading abstractions giving way to cellular forms that reflect the complexity of the worlds held—and obscured—by digital screens.
The latest addition to the centre is Delwara, a 1982 work by New York-based, Gujarat-born painter Natvar Bhavsar. Working with pure powdered pigment, Bhavsar allows air currents, breath and movement to determine how the colour settles onto the canvas.
Portraits of a City
Delhi-based conceptual artist Vibha Galhotra’s City Obscure builds Mumbai’s skyline out of hundreds of ghungroos, transforming a ceremonial object worn by dancers into a shimmering urban dreamscape.
Mysuru artist N S Harsha takes a more human view in Seekers Paradise, where a crowd of faces, tilted skyward, seems to hold the collective aspiration of a metropolis in motion.
Odisha-born artist Jagannath Panda widens the frame with Earth’s Whisper, presenting the planet as a series of interconnected worlds and inviting a reflection on our relationship with a larger ecosystem we inhabit.
A Meeting of Worlds
Celebrated Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s Clouds brings her signature infinity into the open air: 90 mirror-polished stainless-steel forms reflect and fragment the sky, architecture and visitors, creating an ever-changing encounter between artwork and audience.
At the Art Cafe, Japanese pop-art icon Takashi Murakami’s instantly recognizable flowers sit alongside London-based, Bangladesh-born artist Rana Begum’s light-responsive abstractions. Each painting, developed over months, continues to shift with the changing light in the space.
Art Along the Way
What makes public art at NMACC distinctive is its relationship with the spaces around it. These works do not exist apart from the Centre’s architecture or its visitors; they become part of the journey through it. A visitor may encounter an artwork while arriving, walking between spaces, meeting friends or pausing for a meal—turning an everyday movement through the Cultural Centre into an opportunity to look a little closer.
Here, the gallery has no fixed walls. It unfolds across passages, gathering spaces and unexpected corners, bringing together artistic traditions, contemporary practices and perspectives from around the world.
