A Place is Made but, Do We Get It?

Gratitude to The Place that is Humayunpur and the people who made (and continue to make) within it a place for us who are othered in this city.

Ahiama Panmei, Asha , Ashok (Eat Pham), Amar, Nisha, Laphings corner, Gugun’s store, Pigou, Emmanuel Zou, Sowgene, Thangkhansuan Gualnam, Chongrosiem, Sonam (Yo Tibet), Khayingphi, Shun, Vanshika Goel, My family and friends

Participating Artists Bellona Yumnam Children Supported by Centre for Women & Girls David Yambem Felix Chungkham Jacob Nunthuk Lamhoiching Mangte Menty Jamir Parismita Singh Rachungailiu Gonmei Saadgi G, Shashank Shekhar Sarah Lalhrietzuol Shiarlua Goldminson Aimol

Curated by Anna Sireiliu Charenamei

A place is made where the streets are “smelly” like home. A place is made through a handshake of “live and let live” between landlords and tenants. A place is made in which there is an ineffable certainty of safety . A place is made so it can be a mooring for kin who escaped arson and carnage. Two decades later. A place is made and it is desirable for a new high/art public who are pretending to get it. A place is made where the different publics of the city feel “safe”. A place is made by people who don't feel the same safety where the rest of the city’s publics roam. A place is made where those who first cushioned the cold cement feel hesitant to enter. A place is made where the people’s dearth of time to respond to disrespect is mistaken to be docility and hospitality. A place is made where sacred food practices designed for our old gods are sleeplessly generated and mindlessly depleted. A place is made reluctantly for “Rice Beer Paglus”. A place is made to feel like home, but do we get it?

The Exhibition is an ongoing practice of collectivising in giving form to some of the grumblings deep in our hearts about this place that is made within Humayunpur. The Curator positions herself as a niece of Humayunpur who has been a receiver of joy her aunts offer and a witness to their immaculate acuity during moments of derision. The themes are guided by these emotions and an attempt at sieving through the bargains made in making a safe place through the framework of “Place Making”. These are Bargains made between Landowner and Tenant, both identities with complicated histories of belonging in the capital.

The Exhibition provides for each artist to espouse divergent expressions of the place that run parallel with their personal experiences of Humayunpur. It is cautioned that this practice is not interested in an exercise of representing the entire region beyond the chicken neck. While some of the artists respond to the history and “North-East” experience the place offers, the exhibition is also shaped by the Curator’s ongoing research on the incessant migration to Delhi from her home state. As this is being written in Delhi, irrational havoc carries on in Manipur. The exhibition asks, would Humayunpur not have been as desirable or cool without the unique political instability of a state that has forced its people out to achieve their dreams of a peaceful coexistence in this place? It also hopes to provoke the Delhi Publics to ask themselves whether it is fine to go on devouring a “niche” sum of experience (only to be replaced by the next exotic heritage) sans a careful math of its variables. Finally, this collaboration also responds to the collective exasperation felt by a people from a frontier region towards an expectation placed on them to situate themselves within intricate historiographies and gnarly local politics, perhaps this is a rebellion and the curation and artworks are for those who might get it. ~ Anna Sireiliu Charenamei

Felix Chungkham Eche Thianching, 2026 Oil pastel, soft pastels, sketch pen(ink), acrylic, charcoal and graphite In a swirling world of intellectual problems and so-called solutions, identity becomes labels. Identity becomes brands; ideology becomes a seasonal package or a whole franchise. Humans become less of a person and more of an idea or thought; the material consequences of “just being” and “just trying” have no use in this enlightened dystopia. Careless inclusiveness becomes the new exclusivity. Identity becomes the gun I can shoot once a label goes outside my imaginary boundaries. As such, we have an endless arsenal of made-up imaginary labels to produce what we can call “conflict.” My current project endeavors to document such an individual affected by certain areas and genres of this conflict. Displaced and simply being—nothing more, no adjectives or adverbs—simply living on the streets of Delhi’s mongoloid hub. A shop with visiting families, friends, strangers, labels, and groups, just being. A sketch of only a certain part of her life at the shop, where I, as a conscious tool myself, lay bare my thoughts in the work, as I always do. What happens in all this politics of identity, culture, ideology, and so on? What happens when people interact as persons and just be? What happens when these labels are not merely labels but part of being?

I have found that the few quick strokes I make of people, in real time, have only been honest—honest of my position, my thoughts, my view, and my skills. I usually like being hasty; while it is crude, unresolved, unfinished, it is still honest of myself, of the parts that are there. It is the closest thing to truth I have most of the time—my truth, their truth, our truth, or whatever kind of epistemology and metaphysics one considers. I feel it is the closest to actually understanding that I will ever have (or so I feel).

As such, the series of works is a documentation through live sketches. With my thoughts laid bare, and people seen as persons, individuals, packages, and labels, I am simply trying to see what happens in the life of a person of many, while they are just being.

Felix Chungkham Eche Thianching, 2026 Oil pastel, soft pastels, sketch pen(ink), acrylic, charcoal and graphite

Shiarlua Goldminson Aimol Where Evenings Remain, 2026 Acrylic on canvas 5 x 3 ft Vertical This work reflects the emotional landscape of Delhi’s Humayunpur not through literal structures but through atmosphere and memory. Layers of dark, textured tones evoke the density and closeness of the locality, where spaces overlap and boundaries blur. A muted green luminosity drifts across the surface, recalling the distinct character of Delhi evenings … streetlights softened by dust and smog, light absorbed by concrete, and the quiet glow of life continuing behind walls. At its centre a diffused light emerges gently from the darkness, suggesting moments that define urban memory: a lit window, a late night room, a presence that remains long after the scene has passed. The room might represent a vendor of humayunpur working till the break of dawn, either fermenting or shredding meat for pickles. It could also represent a late night employee of the BPO sector back from home after a day shift or getting ready to leave for a night shift.

Shiarlua Goldminson Aimol Where Evenings Remain, 2026 Acrylic on canvas 5 x 3 ft Horizontal

Bellona Yumnam Untitled , 2026 Photography

These are images made walking around Humayunpur.

Observing the neighbourhood through an ordinary and unspectacular gaze, a sense of identity of the place begins to emerge

Sarah Lalhrietzoul Untitled , 2026 Acrylic on carrom board Sarah turns to indispensable items of her hometown : acarrom board and a Tarpaulin Sheet as a canvas . The carrom board specifcally represents the time constraints for fun because it is a tool of leisure in the rural to semi rural home context where many of the migrants in Humayunpur arrive from but in this palce, leisure is not an option, and the carrom board is transformed into a piece of art instead.

Bellona Yumnam 2 pm from Untitled , 2026 Photography

Sarah Lalhrietzoul Untitled, 2026 Acrylic on carrom board

Menty Jamir End of a Circle Photography

Before there was our Humayunpur, there were the people who stayed long enough to make it Humayunpur. What now feels familiar, crowded lanes, glowing signboards, and a restless circulation of people and goods, was once held together by smaller beginnings. The archives of Humayunpur run deep.

They are not only written in documents or photographs, but in memory, repetition, and the physical layering of the built environment. Some people have remained long enough to witness these shifts and cracks firsthand, participating in the neighborhood’s steady expansion, its economy, its experiments, and its evolving eccentric character. For many, these earlier moments feel like they belong to another lifetime. Yet the process of layering and peeling has never stopped. Humayunpur continues to be built through these accumulations. This work engages with Humayunpur as a living archive shaped by immigration, time, labor, and memory. It is made of subtle transformations that have unfolded through everyday spaces and people who have made a life here.

Rachungailiu Gonmei Home Almost, Finding Ground in Humayunpur, 2026 Photobook This body of work closely examines the lives of individuals employed and residing within Humayunpur, Safdarjung. As the neighbourhood undergoes visible transformation marked by the emergence of new cafés, retail spaces, and upgraded businesses residents witness their surroundings evolve faster than their economic realities. While physically bound to the area, they find themselves increasingly unable to participate in or afford the lifestyle they provide the services the place is famous for. Increasingly excluded from the lifestyle these changes produce, they occupy a soft borderland. This work traces this quiet dissonance between labour and leisure, presence and exclusion, revealing how people continue to inhabit a space that no longer moves at their pace

Menty Jamir from End of a Circle Photography

Rachungailiu Gonmei Home Almost, Finding Ground in Humayunpur, 2026 Photobook

Saadgi G, Shashank Shekhar The Act of Dreaming Short (Animentary) Language: Manipuri (Meiteilon, Kuki Zo) The Act of Dreaming is a short animated film that traces the dreams of children growing up amid long standing conflict in Manipur, Northeast India.

Moving through subconscious landscapes shaped by their dreams, the film reflects on how violence enters a chid’s inner world, shaping identity, belonging, and the fragile possibility of healing. Rather than asking children to speak directly about trauma or lived experience, the film turns to dreams as a language where fear, memory, and hope surface in unexpected forms. Children recount and draw their dreams. A boy becomes Spider Man moving across fractured villages. A child digs into the earth searching for a missing mother.

Through the childlike language of animation set against the reality of conflict, the film reveals how imagination absorbs and transforms lived experience.

Within these visions emerge traces of heroism shaped by the presence of guns, alongside the silent fears of girls learning to withdraw as women’s bodies become sites of conflict. The film gently engages with themes of gender, violence, and land, remaining within the logic of dreams to reveal how reality seeps into the subconscious. These images are never explained or resolved.

They remain open, fragmented, and unfinished. In this space, the act of dreaming itself becomes an act of survival.

Art and Craft Workshop with Children Supported by Centre for Women and Girls Dear Capital of India, 2026 A workshop with children and youth including those displaced from their homes - supported by the Centre for Women and Girls (CWG), based in Chandel Manipur. Workshop Prompt: An exercise of drawing how the children imagine Delhi to be, to look like. How would they imagine living a life in the city.

To bring items in their homes or camps left out to be discarded to the workshop to recreate them into works of Art. Report: Phalbung (Tengnoupal District) On 14/02/2026, an arts and craft workshop was held with 18 children (9 male and 9 female) from the Shine in Unison Children Club in Phalbung village. When asked to imagine and draw Delhi, many said they had heard of it but had never seen it. Several boys drew guns, army camps, and jeeps with guns, imagining soldiers there like those they see around them. Many girls instead drew natural scenery, saying they did not know what Delhi looked like. For the craft activity, children used waste materials such as plastic bottles, glass bottles, and old clothes to make painted vases, bags, dolls, and puppets. Although some first worried about dirtying their uniforms, they later said they forgot about it and enjoyed the session.

Tengnoupal On 15/02/2026, (14 male and 31 female) from children’s clubs in Chahmol village and Loisi village particiapted. While reflecting on Delhi, the children expressed simple but meaningful ideas about the city. One girl drew a colorful heart and wrote “I love Delhi,” explaining that she liked it because it is the capital city of India. The activity showed how some children associated Delhi mainly with its national significance rather than a visual image of the city. During the session, facilitators also observed playful experimentation with materials, such as one boy who painted using his entire palm, showing a spontaneous and tactile way of engaging with the activity.

Chandel Area (Chumbang, Ziontlang, Meipou, Khuringmul) On 14/02/2026, children from Chumbang, Ziontlang, Meipou, and Khuringmul villages in the Chandel area were invited to imagine themselves in Delhi and create drawings or crafts based on what they thought the city might be like. One child from Meipou imagined many vehicles along the roadside compared to their village. Another, recalling a poem about skyscrapers, drew very tall buildings. One child drew mountains and houses, saying she had heard Delhi is polluted and hot and imagined a cleaner, more peaceful environment. Some children believed packaged foods like chips come from outside Manipur, possibly from Delhi. Another child drew a peaceful natural scenery with a swing, saying she simply wanted a calm place.

Film Screening

David Yambem April

Animation Short Synopsis : A woman in her late twenties, residing and working in a city, takes a respite and returns home, which is situated in a fictional town in Manipur. After an extended period of separation from her home, she eagerly anticipates rekindling the connection with her roots.

Curator’s Note A representation of many migrant’s longing for home and also a beautiful reminder on how the food we consume from Humayunpur is produced after hard labour. Speaks of the journey of yield before it reaches our plates in a table in a cramped one room flat or a thali in a restaurant.

Lamhoiching Mangte (Vocal Artist) Jacob Nunthuk (Cinematograpahy) Luidawng (Unwithering) The music video launch of Luidawng by Lamhoiching and Jacob is a tribute to an idea of home through old Paite folk songs. Having been internally displaced from Manipur, both the artists reflect on the yearning for a return to home. The work also stands as a blessing to the youth, to remain like an unwithering plant, rooted and hopeful even in the face of loss.

Public Art Display in Humayunpur

Only in Humayunpur In a place already filled with art in the form of graffiti this is a public display of works by two artists who have had long associations with Humayunpur. This attempt is at bringing the distant and exclusive act of Art viewing into these streets, where people often do not have the time, or perhaps even the class access, to enter art spaces. It seeks to understand the politics of looking through these artworks kept in public: will there be interest, indifference, or defilement?

Menty Jamir

Enjoying Like Anything!

Artist Statement I carry my home with me everywhere. For people like me who have chosen migration and have been shaped by it, home is often a lot of questions rather than a location on a map. But it reveals itself in small, familiar gestures: in my habits and peculiarities, in the foods I cook and share, and in acts of care that feel instinctive even in unfamiliar surroundings. Living in this in-between condition means that belonging is constantly shifting, especially in a place that has never welcomed us wholeheartedly. I am beginning to understand that belonging is less about geography and more about relationships, about the subtle ways people recreate closeness, trust, and recognition wherever they land. I am also beginning to see how shared experiences of migration bring people together. Perhaps we are not that different after all, because we all carry our homes with us everywhere, which is why we feel like home to each other outside of the Northeast.

Menty Jamir Enjoying Like Anything!

Parismita Singh Artist note The city as refuge, and surrealist subterfuge.

I lived in a shared rented studio space in Humayunpur, Delhi for a few years, sometime in the 2000s. I began my first graphic novel there. This shared cityscape of chaos and multiplicity, found its way into bits and pieces of my work down the years. Now, a generation later, I am working on a new set of drawings, that seeks to look backwards and forward, to these cityscapes shaped by nostalgia, myth and fantasy, aspiration, desire, despair, and the politics and turmoil of different places and times.

The art works are a part of a larger project: ‘Metamorphosis and the City’.

Exhibit 1 ‘My Sister Made her Home in the City’, 2025 Original: Ink and Charcoal on Paper.

Exhibited: Print.

200 cm (h) and 65 cm (w)

Exhibit 2 ‘Seafood Home Delivery in Landlocked Balconies’, 2026 An Extract from a larger scroll ‘ Original: Brush and ink on Chinese rice paper bought in Delhi.

Exhibit 3 Untitled, 2025 200 cm ( h) and 130 cm (w) Original: Charcoal and ink on paper.

Exhibit 4 Reply 2000s, 2005 -06 (?)

3 pieces of comic book art Pen and ink on paper.

This exhibition has been possible with the support of Khoj International Artists’ Association and Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi. The Curatorial Intensive South Asia (CISA) fellowship programme was conceived and initiated by GoetheInstitut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi in collaboration with Khoj International Artists’ Association.