THOROUGHFARE
Works by Deepshikha Khaitan Nikitha Satish, Curated by Neenu Jacob
Curatorial Note
Some forms of knowing cannot be taught. They emerge through repeated encounters - walking the same street, noticing a recurring pattern, making with our hands, or returning to a place until it begins to feel known. We often think of knowledge as something we acquire: facts we learn, places we visit, histories we inherit. Yet much of what stays with us is learned differently.
Thoroughfare begins with this understanding of knowledge as something embodied. Places are not simply inhabited; they are learned. We come to know them through attention, making, and the relationships we build over time.
Although their practices are materially distinct, Deepshikha Khaitan and Nikitha Satish are both interested in these acts of gradual knowing.
Image: Cityscape 5 (2025). Pen, Paper Collage and Acrylic on Paper, 24 x 37.5 in.
Image: Cityscape 3 (2025). Pen and Collage on Paper, 18 x 18.5 in.
Deepshikha constructs intricate drawn worlds where architecture, landscape and imagination continually fold into one another. Built through thousands of patient marks, her works resist immediate reading. They reward sustained attention, revealing hidden relationships that quietly transform the familiar city into a place of discovery.
Image: The Shuttle (2026). Pen, Paper Collage and Acrylic on Paper, 24 x 37.5 in.
Image: Navilu (2026). Stoneware Clay and Embroidery on Ceramic, 7 x 4 in.
Nikitha works across photography, embroidery and ceramics, allowing one material language to move through another. Photographs become embroidered surfaces, textile traditions find new expression in clay, and making itself becomes a way of remembering. Rather than preserving craft as something fixed, her practice reveals it as a living language - one that continues to evolve through touch, translation and time.
A thoroughfare is more than a route between places. It is where paths cross. Where movement creates encounter. Where people, materials, histories and ideas meet before continuing on, each subtly changed by the exchange.
Image: Bagh 4 (2025). Mixed media and Paper Collage with Gold Leaf, 5.8 x 8.2 in.
Image: Weave(r) (2026). Embroidery on Printed Fabric, 24 x 23 in.
Seen together, these works invite us to think of places in much the same way. They are shaped not only by geography, but by the relationships we build with them - through the things we notice, the stories we inherit, the objects we make and the memories we carry forward.
Like a thoroughfare itself, this exhibition asks us not simply to arrive, but to move slowly through it, allowing unexpected connections to emerge along the way.