Matters of Art (MoA) was founded in 2006 by visual artist, curator and editorial designer Anoop Kamath as one of India’s earliest e-zines dedicated to contemporary art. Over the past two decades, MoA has continued to document, discuss and engage with the evolving landscape of Indian contemporary art, bringing together artists, ideas, exhibitions and conversations from across the country.

The journey began with Real 2006, MoA’s first exhibition, presented at the Visual Arts Gallery, New Delhi, in April 2006. The exhibition brought together contemporary artists from different parts of India, including Bose Krishnamachari, G.R. Iranna, Manjunath Kamath and George Martin P. J. among others. The premise of Real 2006 was deliberately open-ended: to present “a real cross-section of contemporary art* being produced across India, without imposing a single curatorial theme or ideological framework. It was an attempt to capture the diversity, plurality and immediacy of artistic practices at a particular moment.

Twenty years later, Real 2026 revisits that founding idea. This exhibition in The Stainless Gallery brought together 14 artists from across India, representing different generations, approaches, mediums and artistic concerns. Rather than being bound by a common curatorial theme, the exhibition embraces the diversity of practices that constitutes the contemporary Indian art landscape today.

The word Real is therefore both a title and an intention. The exhibition does not seek to define what contemporary Indian art should be; instead, it offers a glimpse of what it is—in its many forms, voices and directions. The works reflect varied engagements with the personal and the political, the social and the intimate, materiality and memory, tradition and contemporary experience.

Real 2026 is, in many ways, a continuation of the conversation that began with Real 2006. If the first exhibition attempted to capture a cross-section of Indian contemporary art at the beginning of MoA’s journey, this anniversary edition looks at the multiplicity of practices that exist two decades later.

The exhibition thus becomes both a celebration and a document: a celebration of twenty years of Matters of Art, and a snapshot of the diverse and continually evolving art practices that make up contemporary India today.