Inside Zehra Jumabhoy's Curatorial World

The Singaporean-Indian art historian, curator and critic looks at modern Indian artwork through a lens that is as global as it is deeply personal.

- VIVEK MENEZES

NO MODERN INDIAN artwork sold for even ₹1 crore until the 21st century, and it was only in 2002 that Tyeb Mehta's triptych Celebration crossed that milestone.

Sotheby's and Christie's auction houses had begun to pivot NRI eyeballs and dollars back home after their first New York sales in 1995, and by the time the homegrown Osian's and Saffronart started up in 2000, the elements of an unprecedented boom had begun to fall into place. Ground zero was South Mumbai, where a bewildering proliferation of new galleries, artists, would-be curators and aspirational collectors sprang up out of nowhere. Just then, in one of the great examples of the right people in the right place, Time Out Mumbai hit the newsstands in September 2004, published by the 20-something Smriti Ruia as an offshoot of her family's Essar conglomerate.

Time Out Mumbai brought together an idealistic young team that perfectly matched the moment, and leading the art coverage was Zehra Jumabhoy, a fourth-generation Singaporean-Indian who has since gone on to become the most persuasive, preeminent expert on South Asian modernism.

In that explosive moment, everything was changing at what seemed like warp speed. A few months after the magazine was launched, Mehta's spectacular Mahishasura became the first modern Indian artwork to sell for more than a million dollars. And since then, those auction records have only swelled. Earlier this year, art collector Kiran Nadar reset the paradigm after an intense two-bidder battle in yet another New York sale, which she won by paying just over ₹118 crore for Maqbool Fida Husain's epic Untitled (Gram Yatra).