Smriti Dixit
Mumbai-based artist Smriti Dixit draws inspiration from her long reflective walks outdoors. The natural landscape and coastal flora near her home in suburban Mumbai, with its creepers, trees and rippling ocean waves, provides much food for creative thought. One can see the visual results of these musings in her latest exhibition ‘Whispered Continuum’ – a solo show currently on display at Art Alive Gallery, New Delhi till January 5, 2026.
“Through her sculptural installations rendered in a largely monochromatic palette with vivid reds, she reimagines the quiet persistence of nature and its cycles of growth, decay and renewal,” explains Sunaina Anand, founder-director, Art Alive Gallery. She adds, “Evolving since 1995, her practice of coiling, weaving and stitching fabric and found materials has been both meditative and transformative. This body of work marks her return to Delhi after two decades, reaffirming her pioneering engagement with textile as a medium and her reflection on the continuity between material, memory and emotion.”
Originally hailing from Bhopal, Dixit is known for her abstract mixed media artworks which incorporate a variety of materials with traditional sewing. An alum of the prestigious Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda, Dixit also has a Diploma in classical vocals from Bangim Sangeetayan in Kolkata.
Her mixed media works integrate fabric, found objects and the detritus of everyday life with the aim of depicting the ways in which one can creatively recycle – a practice that was deeply engrained in most Indian households till fairly recently. “My practice highlights women’s work, which the patriarchal systems of production have overlooked by creating a division between the home, assumed to be the domestic space and the workplace dedicated to men. I explore themes of births, recycling and regeneration through my art,” she shares.
She works with painting, ceramics, textiles and installations, constantly experimenting with different materials and a varied visual vocabulary. There is deconstruction in the construction of the art, with the tearing of paper, plucking of yarn from fabric, coiling, stitching, unspooling and re-stitching of threads.
Dixit has had a long and prolific career. Some of her recent solo shows include Savage Flowers (2022), Memory of Red (2015) at Art Musings, Mumbai, Design Trail, Abaca, Mumbai (2017), St Moritz Art Master at the Andrea Robbi Museum and a solo at the Galerie Stephan Witschi in Zürich (2014). Apart from this, her work has also been displayed at the India Art Fair with Art Musings. Her most recent group exhibitions include one with Apparao Galleries, Chennai (2025), Resonance with Art Musings, Mumbai (2025), I Interpret with Nine Fish Art Gallery, Mumbai (2024) and Fragments of Our Time at The Whitaker Museum, British Textile Biennial, Lancashire, Blackburn, which was curated by Uthra Rajgopal in 2023.
Additionally, she has participated in the Bharat Bhavan Biennale in 1994 and 2016. One of her artworks titled ‘Trap’, part of the Jaya He GVK New Museum at the Airport Art Project in Terminal 2, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, Mumbai, is a site-specific installation exploring the potent trap of consumerism. Dixit is the recipient of many accolades, including the Raza Foundation Award (2004) and the Pollock Krasner Grant (2013).
Anand explains the charm of Dixit’s work by saying, “Nature, in its quiet persistence, forms the core of Smriti Dixit’s artistic inquiry. Her works are imaginative recreations of sensations and memories — nuanced reflections on the cycles of growth, decay and renewal that define both nature and human experience. The alluring sculptural installations, rendered in a predominantly monochromatic palette with red as a prominent hue, draw viewers into their folds of coiled and knotted intricacies. These strange yet intuitively familiar forms embody the beauty of the organic and the unfinished.”
Dixit adds to this, “I think my work is a celebration of the beauty of the ordinary. I understand how rare it is to be ordinary today. I like to describe my work as an array of different wavelengths that capture the essence of germination. Things don’t simply appear in nature — they germinate slowly, taking the time they need.”
Her process of coiling, weaving and stitching fabric and found materials has been evolving since 1995, with many of her works recycled to create new ones. This makes her practice both meditative and transformative, best described as a “celebration of nature’s continuity and a quiet critique of our culture’s impulse to tame it.” She elaborates, “My works are visuals that I collide with and collaborate with daily. They are more like memories of what I see. It’s an attempt at observing again what has already been observed and the method of revealing the observed by expressing oneself in the endless possibilities of letting a piece of cloth be a piece of cloth in all its extent.”
“We are delighted to bring Smriti Dixit’s work to Delhi after two decades. A pioneer in her field, she has been working with the medium of textile since the last three decades and this body of work reaffirms her deep engagement with materiality and her medium. As textile art gains momentum in the global art circuit, her body of work becomes increasingly relevant, initiating conversations around human experiences and their intrinsic connection to nature.” concludes Anand.
Whispered Continuum – a solo show by artist Smriti Dixit is on view from 29 November 2025 – 5 January 2026 at Art Alive Gallery, S-221 Panchsheel Park, New Delhi.
Noor Anand Chawla pens lifestyle articles for various publications and her blog www.nooranandchawla.com.
