Madras Art Weekend (MAW) – The Madras Reimagined: From Art Gathering to Cultural Movement | A Contemporary Art Exhibition Reimagining Chennai at Taj Coromandel, Chennai – Exploring South India’s Most Influential Annual Art Festival
– brings together galleries, collectors, & art enthusiasts citywide
| CasualWalker’s Rating for Madras Art Weekend (MAW) : | |
9.9 – Well-curated / Thoughtful |
|
Madras Art Weekend (MAW) brings together the city’s art ecosystem converges—galleries, collectors, artists, and enthusiasts gathering for a celebration that spans the entire creative spectrum. Through gallery tours, intimate collector home visits, studio explorations, workshops, and conversations, the event creates genuine exchange between artists and audiences. This flagship weekend offers the most concentrated, immersive dive into Chennai‘s contemporary art scene. 
Madras Art Weekend : When Chennai Became a Living Canvas
Madras Art Weekend‘s (MAW) fourth edition turned Chennai into a gallery without walls. The city underwent a complete transformation—art installations, exhibitions, and performances appeared across the metropolis, creating a creative ecosystem that made the entire urban landscape feel like one cohesive artistic experience. Madras Art Weekend runs annually in December. For year-round events, follow their programming and community initiatives. This city’s creative pulse never stops—the weekend just amplifies it.
Madras Art Weekend – A Festival Born from Passion
Madras Art Weekend (MAW) – founded in 2022 by Upasana Asrani—who also helms the International Foundation for the Arts—Madras Art Weekend has rapidly evolved from a niche art gathering into one of South India’s most influential cultural movements. What started as a weekend celebration has become an annual legacy that Chennai now claims as its own.
This year Madras Art Weekend’s theme, “Madras Reimagined,” wasn’t just a curatorial choice—it was a call to arms. How do we honor a city’s heritage while sculpting its future? How do we preserve memory while embracing innovation? These questions echoed through every gallery, every panel discussion, every street corner that became part of the festival.
Scale Was Breathtaking
Over 100 artists, twelve leading galleries, immersive exhibitions scattered across the city, panel discussions that ran from morning coffee to evening cocktails, heritage walks that traced Chennai’s creative DNA, and community engagements that brought art to those who needed it most.
The main showcase at Taj Coromandel felt like the beating heart of it all—Dhoomimal Gallery, Jaipur Rugs, Gallery G, Art & Soul, Baro Art, Art Magnum, Art Nouveau, Sarala’s Art Centre, Dakshina Chitra Museum, Memeraki, Reachout Gallery, and Ink Art all presented works that ranged from ethereal watercolors to contemporary pieces that challenged and delighted in equal measure.
But MAW 2025 refused to be confined. It spilled into Raw Mango stores, the British Deputy High Commission’s private residence, Gallery Veda, Lakshana, and culminated in an atmospheric performance at Amethyst’s Wild Garden Café. The city itself became the canvas.
Weekend That Moved Us
Walking through the exhibitions felt like traveling through time and consciousness simultaneously. Ashok Bhowmick’s untitled pen-and-ink works on canvas captured something raw and immediate. Akkitham Narayanan’s oil paintings glowed with an inner light. The collaborative pieces by Ruchi Bakshi Sharma and Sanjeev Sharma—particularly “The Bridge of Incidents”—created dialogues between memory and moment.
But what struck me most was how the curation embraced contradictions: Traditional techniques met contemporary expression. Heritage preservation danced with futuristic reimagining.
Conversations That Mattered
Day One set the tone with a collector’s panel on “The Impact of Private and Public Patronage.” Watching Amit Khanna (Amaya Ventures), Siddharth Somaiya (Somaiya School of Art), Rhea Kuruvilla (Frieze VIP Consultant), and Narayan Lakshman (The Hindu) dissect how patronage shapes cultural ecosystems felt essential in understanding MAW’s own existence.
The evening at the British Deputy High Commission was pure magic. Deputy High Commissioner Halima Holland opened her private residence for “The Designer as Disrupter”—a panel featuring Tahir Sultan, Nimish Shah, Kallol Datta, and Vivek Karunakaran. Cocktails, canapés, and conversations about design as rebellion? Sign me up for eternity.
Thursday’s “Curatorial Cartography” gave us rare access to the minds behind the galleries. Directors and artists from Art & Soul, Art Magnum, and Dhoomimal Gallery revealed their selection processes, their obsessions, their visions. Ashok Bhowmick even launched his new book “Liminal Line” during this session—a moment that felt both intimate and historic.
But the real emotional crescendo came Friday evening at Amethyst. Lekha Washington’s poetic performance “Unbecoming or Ways to Survive the Apocalypse” wove art, poetry, movement, and raw emotion into something that left the audience breathless. It was the perfect culmination of four days dedicated to creative vulnerability.
Art Vandi – Innovation That Inspired
One of MAW’s most powerful initiatives this year was the Art Vandi—a mobile art van created in collaboration with NalandaWay Foundation. This wasn’t just a cute idea; it was transformative. The van traveled through rural pockets around Chennai, carrying art materials and facilitators to children who might never have access to such resources. Schools across the city were invited to engage, planting seeds for the next generation of makers.
Madras Art Weekend 2025 wasn’t just a festival—it was a statement. Chennai announced itself not as a city preserving culture in amber, but as a metropolis actively reimagining what culture can be. The theme worked because it was lived, not just displayed.
