"If you let the moment pass, history may not understand you"—a line from a letter Khorshed Gandhy wrote to Nayantara Sahgal in 1978.

This above statement, written by gallerist Khorshed Gandhy to the Indian writer Nayantara Sahgal, holds true for a moment in the past when the frame moulding company Chemould transformed into Mumbai’s first ever art gallery in 1963. In Jerry Pinto’s book about the gallery entitled Citizen Gallery (2022), the filmmaker and documentarist Behroze Gandhy says, "When (Chemould gallery) opened there was this great energy in the air. Everyone seemed to be involved, everyone had a role to play. Part of this was my father’s (Kekoo Gandhy) energy I think; he had a way of making you feel you were part of everything that was happening. But it was my mother (Khorshed Gandhy) who made sure the energy was focused and went in the right direction.” Nurtured by husband and wife Kekoo and Khorshed Gandhy, Chemould became a melting pot of cross-cultural dialogues for independent India. Since 1988, it has been helmed by their daughter Shireen Gandhy and renamed Chemould Prescott Road (CPR). The institution recognises the art frame moulding company as the genesis of this gallery, which in turn has been a catalyst in moulding Indian art history and its contemporary present.

Delving deep into more than 15,000 items from the archives, the curator Shaleen Wadhwana and her team looked at CPR’s rich history spanning six decades of Indian modern and contemporary art. The resulting two-part exhibition, CheMoulding: Framing Future Archives (Part 1: September 15-October 22, 2023), is much more than just records of a glorious past. Over 30 of Chemould’s current artists—including Jitish Kallat, Shilpa Gupta, Atul Dodiya, Varunika Saraf, Nilima Sheikh and Meera Devidayal—have responded to personalised curatorial prompts from the archives. Their works are surrounded by archival memorialisation of veteran artists ranging from Tyeb Mehta, K.H. Ara and Bhupen Khakhar to Rummana Hussain and Jangarh Singh Shyam. This curation is a retrospective reflecting on the gallery’s public institutional role and its internal everyday idiosyncrasies vis-à-vis its contribution to the Indian and global art movements.

Connecting with the gallery's roots, the framing shop and the Kekee Manzil, Gandhy’s residential mansion, proved to be major curatorial prompts. Situated in Bandra, the Kekee Manzil is a landmark on its own with high-beamed ceilings, an expansive view of the ocean and an impressive collection of Indian modernists. The artist Ritesh Meshram reflects on the notion of memory and time with his sculpture that incorporates reclaimed wood from this so-called "House of Art". The door installation makes one feel the urge to walk into the centurion mansion. Desmond Lazaro echoes a similar sentiment as he responds to the Gandhy’s family tree with a painted family portrait posed outside the house at an altar below the grand staircase. A special highlight is a painting of a young Kekoo Gandhy.

As the show journeys down memory lane, Shireen shares her fondest memory as a child growing up around Chemould. “I loved loitering around the gallery, going to the storeroom while my mother would pull out paintings to show clients,” she says. “I loved that I could go to the cafe Samovar and order a coke without having to tell my parents and sign for it. I loved going across the road to Rhythm House where we could borrow records, enter a room and listen to music for hours. Coming to the gallery was about all of that too!” Described in Citizen Gallery, “Samovar was a café on the ground floor of the Jehangir Art Gallery. For decades it was where the art community went to meet and talk… Now it’s a narrow passage without a soul which pretends to be a gallery from time to time.”

The Chemould archives—which includes letters, price lists, catalogues, invites, newspaper articles and much more—shed light on the artistic sensibilities in India’s evolving contemporary art world. One of the many themes is an emphasis on the active involvement of Indian artists in the socio-political pulse of the time. A very crucial corner of the exhibition, called the ‘Room For Resistance And Resilience,’ responds to the political involvement of the art circuit in post-independence India. This includes political movements such as the Year of Barricades (1968), Artists Against Communalism (1990-93), amongst others. “It is a crucial room that is the beating heart of this exhibition, responding to the past and future. From Vivan Sundaram’s installations detailing his political participation through the Year of the Barricades 1968 to (the artwork) A Touch of Brightness made in response to banning of a play of the same name which highlights the lives of sex workers in Bombay,” shares Wadhwana. This is contrasted with Varunika Saraf’s hand-embroidered installation, The Longest Revolution (2023). The artwork title is inspired by psychoanalyst Juliet Mitchell’s groundbreaking book Women: The Longest Revolution (1971). Saraf’s images bring to the fore the often overlooked aspect of female participation in social justice movements. Saraf pays homage in her recreation of a photograph by Ram Rahman depicting Khorshed's active participation in the Artists Against Communalism movement at Marine Drive, Bombay.

While exploring the archives, another major gap turned out to be the inadequate representation of women artists in post-independence India. “Shireen Gandhy responded to that as she took the reins in 1988. The late 1980s were a definitive turning point for female artists gaining more visibility, which is also reflected in the changing gallery roster with gender equity. But the overarching concern will always be for how much work needs to be done for all types of representation of marginalised communities and minorities,” says Wadhwana. Gigi Scaria’s installation, Framing the Unframed (2023) bookmarks some pivotal historic moments within the gallery-artist-family ecosystem. "Amidst many personalities from the Chemould family, we meet the artists Pilloo Pochkhanawala, Nalini Malani and Rummana Hussain, who have led visibility for women artists within the Indian art circuit," she says. Sheetal Gattani’s sensitive, muted and textural painting pays homage to the gallery’s old friends and colleagues Zarina Hashmi and Nasreen Mohamedi.

While walking around the space, I realised that the show noticeably includes works by living contemporary artists except Sundaram, a maestro who passed away early this year. "Vivan was busy with his Sharjah work and a book for Kasauli, so I knew I would have to have a special moment when we could actually break down what he could do for this show. Keeping his fragile health in mind, I would talk about this exhibition without stressing him. I knew when the moment came—the kind of artist Vivan was—he would be able to put his mind to bring something that was both relevant and pertinent. Sadly, he left us mid conversations. The discussions (about the artwork titled Year of Barricades (1968) and A Touch of Brightness (1966) continued with Geeta (Kapur), his wife, and the Shergil Sundaram Art Foundation," shares Shireen.

Geeta Kapur’s presence is also felt in Dodiya’s installation, Four Painters, Four Directions (2023), titled after the exhibition of the same name that was presented in gallery Chemould in 1979. Presented within his classic wooden cabinets, Dodiya uses Kapur’s original catalogue essays as artistic prompts to journey down memory lane. Through memento photographs, paintings, clippings and objects, Dodiya invites us to meet his old friends and senior contemporaries: Akbar Padamsee, Gieve Patel, Bhupen Khakhar and Tyeb Mehta.

After visiting the intensive archives, Kallat opted to present a radical architectural intervention that imprints the past within the present. Kallat constructed a curved wall, a structure similar to the original Gallery Chemould on the first floor of Jehangir Art Gallery (1963-2007). This wall, a testament of time and the evolving generations of Indian art, is used to present the CheMoulding timeline—an intensive collation of Indian art history punctuated by key historical moments from 1857 until now. There is a conscious attempt to extend the timeline into the future up to 2050.

By adding the present continuous suffix “-ing”, to make Chemould a verb, the exhibition positions the gallery as an actor that has created a fearless space for artistic freedom since 1963. This show transports visitors into a time capsule punctuated by various historic moments that have shaped India's art scene, as well as a look into the future. The poignant intersection of the modern and the contemporary offers a sense of homecoming for those familiar to the original space and as invites newcomers to immerse themselves in a tactile encounter with history.

An extension to this show, a week-long exhibition entitled Remembering is set to open on October 30 at the place where this journey literally began: the Jehangir Art Gallery. The curation includes works from collectors who were seminal to the support and existence of the nascent venture when collecting art was a rarity in India. This includes Homi Bhabha, whose collection would later become part of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research; Jehangir Nicholson, who went on to make a major collection; or Devinder and Kanwaldeep Sahney, who bought their first painting from the gallery in the 1980s, which was by Mehta, and paid in installments in denomination of Rs 100, for the Rs. 800 ($8.40) artwork. Shireen says, "This show will be a nostalgic walk down the memory lane, where we can unravel stories of people who come, collect memories, show art that triggers memories, converse about art shown during that time and enjoy a week of making notes about the past to feed the future."