Armory Show 2025 - Booth 236 - Art Fairs

Promotesh Das Pulak

Extinct Fish, 2024

Steel, leather, acrylic, glass

Aicon Contemporary is pleased to return to The Armory Show for the second consecutive year with After Nature, a compelling group presentation featuring eleven artists: Adeel uz Zafar, Dhara Mehrotra, G.R. Iranna, H.G. Arunkumar, Jagannath Panda, Katja Larsson, L.N. Tallur, Marcy Chevali, Priyantha Udagedara, Promotesh Das Pulak, and Shradha Kochhar.

Aicon Contemporary at The Armory Show 2024

Building on the momentum of last year’s monumental solo booth by Jeremy Dennis—whose cinematic photographs explored Indigenous identity and the lasting effects of colonial trauma—After Nature cements Aicon Contemporary’s commitment to socially and ecologically engaged art from South Asia and its diaspora that is globally resonant.

In this year’s presentation, the relationship between humanity and the natural world takes center stage, as an investigation into what “nature” has become in the wake of industrialization and displacement. The works on view discuss themes of loss, adaptation, and transformation, offering a variety of considered contemplations on the current planetary condition.

Adeel uz Zafar

Demon 10, 2024

Engraved drawing on Vinyl

72h x 48w in

Across mixed media, sculpture, painting, installation, and textiles, the artists featured in After Nature engage with the natural world as both a collaborator and witness. The presentation unfolds through material inquiries, mythic storytelling, and a reverence for the handmade, with each artist contributing a unique vantage point.

One artist, H.G. Arunkumar, repurposes industrial waste and vernacular materials to challenge systems of consumption, asking how we might build more ethical ways of inhabiting the world. In contrast, Shradha Kochhar’s labor-intensive fiber works, spun and woven by hand, become meditations on slowness, care, and ecological intimacy. Katja Larsson’s practice, informed by archaeology and contemporary artifacts, evokes a future ruin, where fragments of human ambition sit alongside organic decay.

Jagannath Panda and Priyantha Udagedara, both known for their richly layered compositions, blur the boundaries between natural and mythic realms, reflecting on hybridity, adaptation, and the automatonic overlaps between the human and non-human. G.R. Iranna’s contemplative paintings draw on spiritual traditions to reflect on the cycles of destruction and rebirth, while Dhara Mehrotra’s biomorphic abstractions channel microscopic life forms to explore the interconnectedness of all beings.

Jagannath Panda

Echoes of the Microcosm III, 2024

Acrylic, fabric, pigment, glue on canvas

72h x 72w in

Other artists continue these inquiries: Adeel uz Zafar’s intricately etched surfaces reveal tension between preservation and exposure; Marcy Chevali's works evoke tenderness and disquiet through repetition and gesture; Promotesh Das Pulak and L.N. Tallur employ irony to critique the legacies of colonialism and ecological violence.

Together, these artists respond to the question: what remains after nature? Our presentation does not offer easy answers, but instead proposes ways of re-seeing and re-making the world, rooted in memory, archaic rituals, and a hope for restoration.

After Nature underscores Aicon Contemporary’s vision of fostering cross-cultural dialogue through art that is globally resonant. As we continue to navigate the current ecological uncertainties, our presentation offers a humble way forward, through art reflecting resilience and collective care.