Where the Body Begins
Abhishek Pandey | Aparajita JM | Charudatt Pande | Harshada Arvind Kolapkar | Kisalay Vora | Monali Meher | Nandakumar P K | Narendra Dengle | Parth Palsay | Ruby Ram | Ruddhi Vichare | Sameer Gorde | Shilpa Bawane | Uday Banerjee | Vaishnavi Walvekar | Yash Raj
8 August – 12 September 2026
Part one of three exhibitions
Vida Heydari Contemporary is pleased to present Where the Body Begins, one exhibition unfolding in three parts from August to November 2026. Opening on 8 August and continuing through 21 November, it brings together 46 artists in three connected exhibitions: Memory, Nature, and Body.
The title is a question rather than a definition. Where does the body begin? With the physical self, the landscape it inhabits, the histories it carries, or the forces that move through it? Across the three exhibitions, the body is understood as more than anatomy: it is shaped by memory, place, weather, inheritance, touch, labour, material, desire, vulnerability, and other forms of life.
The sequence follows an internal logic: from what is carried and remembered, to what acts upon and through us, to the body as the place where these forces become lived and felt. Each exhibition has its own atmosphere and set of concerns; together they form one continuous curatorial statement.
All participating artists are Pune-born or Pune-based. The project considers the city as shared ground, a place shaped by different generations, histories, environments, and languages. Rather than defining a single Pune art scene, it brings distinct practices into proximity and asks what becomes visible when artists connected by place approach shared questions from different positions.
Where the Body Begins: Memory
Memory considers what remains within places, objects, materials, images, gestures, and inherited forms. It is concerned not only with personal recollection, but with the ways memory is carried collectively: through family, architecture, landscape, language, labour, ritual, archives, and the everyday life of a city.
Memory here is not fixed. It fades, repeats, fractures, and is reconstructed. It may survive as an image or object, or less directly as a trace, an absence, a pattern, a digital residue, or something held within material. The works move between intimate histories and larger cultural memory, asking how the past continues to act upon the present even when its original form has disappeared.
Selected Artworks
