Exhibit 320: “A gallery is not just a container for art”

Kohelika Kohli and Rasika Kajaria reimagine the gallery space of Exhibit 320, letting uneven plaster, exposed concrete and historical traces guide perception and confront the age of artificiality

30 Sep 2025

Namrata Dewanjee

“A gallery is not just a container for art. It is part of how the artwork is seen, understood and experienced,” says EDIDA winner Kohelika Kohli. As CEO and Creative Director of K2India, Kohelika has reimagined Exhibit 320, a space that has shaped South Asian contemporary art for fifteen years. The gallery now stages art with a rigour and presence that demands engagement rather than passive looking.

In an age dominated by high-resolution reproduction, algorithmic curation and machine-perfect displays, Kohelika’s intervention at Exhibit 320 reminds us that architecture and art must be encountered, not mediated by gloss or gadgetry.

“Looking back, I think Exhibit 320 has been all three — a witness, a participant and a provocateur”

Rasika Kajaria of Exhibit 320

Artwork by Sumakshi Singh; Photography courtesy Exhibit 320

LAYERS AND APPARITIONS

The gallery is located in Lado Sarai, a neighbourhood marked by spectral remains of three imperial cities. Its dense history contrasts sharply with the architectural neglect of recent decades. The inherited structure was riddled with inconsistencies: uneven plaster, awkward slab drops and misaligned levels. Instead of erasing them, Kohelika chose to foreground them. “We decided to embrace all these imperfections and let the art do all the talking.”

The decision to retain flaws is a spatial echo of Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation. Sontag writes, “In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.” Kohelika’s intervention invites a similar conversation of intensity. The building itself becomes part of the artwork’s aura, as Walter Benjamin might argue, extending its presence beyond canvas or sculpture into the tactility of a body in space.

Artwork by Shakuntala Kulkarni; Photography courtesy Exhibit 320

WITNESS, PARTICIPANT, PROVOCATEUR

For Founder & Director Rasika Kajaria, the gallery has always been more than a neutral frame. “Looking back, I think Exhibit 320 has been all three — a witness, a participant, and a provocateur,” she reflects. Over fifteen years, it has observed the unfolding of South Asian contemporary art while actively shaping it. The gallery has tested the boundaries of tradition, labour and ecology, encouraging artists to push conceptual and material limits.

“It was less about expansion for its own sake and more about responsibility,” Rasika explains. Artists producing large-scale installations, time-based works or complex, research-driven projects demanded a space commensurate with their vision. The new gallery offers height, scale and flexibility. It also allows for talks, lectures and cultural events that extend exhibitions into living dialogues, turning the space into a forum of ideas.

The exposed concrete ceilings and raw plaster can be seen as honesty made manifest. Surfaces that summon to gather, to engage. The space signals a broader idea: the value of imperfect, tangible presence. Concrete, plaster, and the traces of human labour anchor experience. They insist that art cannot be flattened, and probing perception that requires engagement with materiality. In an era of artificiality, the cracks, textures, and irregularities are not incidental but necessary. A deliberate act of inhabiting space, inseparable from the quintessential human experience of creating art.