Four Days, Forty Emotions (For People Who Know Better)
Mumbai Gallery Weekend is never about discovery. It’s about confirmation. You already know the galleries and you already know who’s having a good year. You know which spaces will be packed, which openings you’ll strategically avoid, and which artists you’re secretly hoping will finally do something different.
You don’t exactly plan for it, you just sort of… rearrange your life around it for four days and pretend it’s casual.
“Oh yeah, I’ll just pop in,” you say. You don’t pop in anywhere. You commit.
DAY ONE: CONTROLLED INTEREST
You enter with restraint. You don’t rush, you don’t gush. You pretend you haven’t been thinking of this weekend since December. You recognise familiar hands immediately: the brushwork, the material choices, the quiet confidence of an artist who knows exactly who they’re speaking to. You clock what’s evolved and what hasn’t.
Someone says, “It’s very them.”
Which could mean anything.
You don’t buy on day one. Day one is for calibrating. Or so you tell yourself.
DAY TWO: APPRAISAL MODE
The day people start talking. Not loudly, just… precisely. You hear numbers floated like secrets. You catch yourself hearing someone say ”already sold” and someone else say “let’s wait.”
You’re no longer thinking in terms of this weekend. You’re thinking long-term. Who’s aging well? Who’s plateauing? And, who’s quietly getting better without announcing it?
DAY THREE: VULNERABILITY (UNEXPECTED AND SLIGHTLY ANNOYING)
Your guard slips and you’re tired of being analytical. Something gets under your skin without asking permission. An artist you thought you had figured out surprises you. A work refuses to stay in its frame, it follows you out, into traffic, into dinner conversations.
You don’t photograph it and you don’t talk about it immediately. You start mentally rearranging walls at home instead.
DAY FOUR: DECISION FATIGUE, CLARITY AT LAST
You revisit only what stayed with you. Everything else has fallen away. The weekend stops being about galleries and starts being about decisions, or the very conscious choice not to make one.
You don’t need to rush; this isn’t an impulse buy, but closer to recognition. You start sensing, “the work belongs in my life, not just this moment.”
The thing about Mumbai Gallery Weekend is that it never tells you what to like. It just forces you to notice what you’re already drawn to. What you’re ready to live with. What still unsettles you just enough to matter.
Four days later, it ends quietly. No big conclusions, just a slightly altered internal compass.
Someone pours another drink. Someone says, “Next year will be interesting.” Everyone nods, because that’s always true.
