Immersive contemporary art meets an indulgent high tea, turning an afternoon into a moment of pause, reflection, and quiet delight
Representational Image
As we step into the Art House at NMACC, we know this isn’t going to be a usual art day. At ART meets TEA, the afternoon begins with a guided walkthrough of Doug Aitken’s Under The Sun, by a team of experts. This powerful, site-specific exhibition unfolds across three immersive floors. The experience is profound — light, sound, film, and sculpture pull us into a multi-sensory journey through time and perception.
From there, we move into the NMACC Arts Café, for an elevated high tea: delicate sandwiches, savoury canapés, made-to-order pizzas, and indulgent desserts, paired with premium teas and coffees, non-alcoholic sparkling wine and beverages. What stays is the flow of how art and flavour mirror each other, how the experience invites pause, reflection, and indulgence in equal measure.
Walking with the artist
When Doug Aitken walked Sunday mid-day through Under The Sun during the show’s opening in December, he shared memories from his first visit to Mumbai in the mid-1990s, when he spent several weeks at Film City working on an artwork centred on Bollywood and the creation and circulation of images. Returning nearly three decades later, the city feels transformed yet familiar. “Mumbai has changed a lot. It’s modernised in many ways, but it still has its soul. It’s an incredible city — so dynamic.”
Doug Aitken
When he revisited Mumbai two years ago for NMACC’s opening, he arrived without expectations but felt there was an incredible opportunity to create an exhibition that could be new, different, and specific to this culture. It’s very easy for artists to be insular as they make work that travels. I wanted to take a different approach and create something that was truly site-specific, for the city, the country, the culture.”
Travelling across India after that visit reshaped the exhibition’s direction. “I became very inspired by different artists, craftspeople, and art communes. That made me think we could create a narrative that is a story dealing with the past, present, and future.” That structure now defines the exhibition. “When you enter, the first floor is very analogue and organic with stone, wood, raw materials; much of it created in collaboration with local artisans.”
For Aitken, art itself resists boundaries. “The definition of art is comprehensive; limitless. Any medium or collaboration can be a passport to create an adventure, for the artist as much as the viewer. What matters is impact. If an artwork can transport you to a different realisation of the world you live in, then it’s successful. In essence, art is compressed energy. It has to interact with you, or it fails.”
Ganges, Installation view. Pic/Dhrupad Shukla
That belief shaped the show’s immersive nature. “I wanted the exhibition to be tactile, immersive, something you can fall into. Not static works, but stories.” The opportunity to do that, he says, is rare. “We want to push limits, make things that are new and adventurous. Not every place allows that. This is a very unique space. The people here have become collaborators and friends. It’s an incredible team.”
The second floor introduces New Era, a video installation anchored by a modern myth. “It follows American engineer, Martin Cooper, who invented the first handheld mobile in the 1970s and made the first wireless call in human history. It reflects on universal questions of where we are, where we’re going, and whether we want that future or not. Is complete connectivity something we can escape? In a world where phones are woven into daily life, the piece resonates strongly, making one reflect on the desire to connect and disconnect at the same time.”
That tension defines the present moment. “We live in a liminal space between the organic, natural world and a digital world that is almost a world of fiction. We step back into the dusty streets and white noise of Mumbai, and then disappear into a screen again. This exhibition is very much about that new landscape, and how we’re coming to terms with it.”
Lightfall/ Other worlds. Pic/Brian Doyle
The final chapter unfolds on the third floor. “It’s a completely immersive work made only of light and sound — no images, but deeply psychological. It’s as if music were light. The colours shift, the light dances. You don’t observe it — you fall into it, subconsciously,” he adds.
Looking back on the process, he describes it as intuitive rather than fixed. “I knew very quickly that the exhibition would unfold in three chapters. But how it would take shape came slowly. It was organic — a long dialogue with the foundation, with artisans, with materials,” says Aitken. That layering feels intentional at the show.
“You physically move from floor to floor, climbing through time; stepping into different moments. That’s what the architecture allows — a journey through past, present, and future,” he signs off.
What: ART meets TEA — a curated cultural experience
When: February 6 | 4 PM to 6 PM
Where: Level 1, Art House, NMACC, BKC
To Book: www.nmacc.com
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