Guftagoo Contemporary: Vol 1 by Nakli Curators

An inquiry into the art world’s evolving fascination with curation — where the curatorial role is consciously embodied as both practice and performance, and the interplay between authenticity and constructed expression opens new discursive possibilities.

Guftagoo Contemporary celebrates the raw, unfiltered voices of South Asian artists while highlighting how the cultural landscape is often influenced by trends of curation, institutional language, and familiar networks. In this space, authenticity is foregrounded over convention, inviting new ways of seeing and engaging.

There remains a surprising scarcity of art that meaningfully responds to current events. This exhibition seeks to address that void by presenting works rooted in the present — art that engages with the cultural, political, and emotional textures of contemporary life. We believe that ‘good’ art does not exist in a vacuum — it confronts, reflects, and challenges the time it inhabits.

The show is envisioned as a guftagoo (conversation)—not only between the artist and their audience, but also as an internal dialogue that situates the artist within their broader creative context.

“We are looking for work that unsettles, that confronts, lies at the core of your creative practice, and exists in the realm of self-awareness to the world around us as opposed to being something from an echo-chamber.“

To live in contemporary times is to be self-aware.

-Curatorial Note by M. Awais and Hammas Wali (@naklicurators)