Unboxed 2.0: The Queer Art Exhibition Reclaiming Space at The LaLiT New Delhi

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There is a particular kind of courage in making art about who you are when who you are has long been considered unspeakable. That courage is precisely what fills the walls of Art Junction at The LaLiT New Delhi this Pride Month, as the gallery opens its doors to Unboxed 2.0: The Queer Art Exhibition, the second edition of a show that has already established itself as one of the capital's most emotionally resonant cultural events.

Photo Credit: PR Handout

Running from 15th June to 15th July 2026 and co-curated by three voices deeply embedded in India's queer arts community, the exhibition brings together twenty-two LGBTQIA+ artists from across the country, and beyond, in a shared exploration of gender, identity, love, memory, and selfhood.

Art That Refuses to Fit the Frame

What makes Unboxed 2.0 distinctive is not simply its subject matter, but the range and rigidity of the voices assembled. The artists come from Mumbai, Kurukshetra, Kolkata, Kerala, and London. Their mediums span ink, acrylic, wood, paper, and mixed forms. And their concerns - identity, the body, migration, mythology, ecology, coloniality - resist easy categorisation.

Co-curator Praveen Mahto describes the exhibition as a space where "reexaminations of fought myths, family genealogies, extra activism and coloniality coexist with reflections on pride issues and interspecies futures." That breadth is intentional. This is not a show with a single message. It is a show with twenty-two of them.

When Indian Mythology Meets Queer Expression

Photo Credit: Anand Jaiswal & Rahul shakya

One of the most striking threads running through Unboxed 2.0 is the way several works draw on Indian spiritual and cultural imagery - and reframe it through an explicitly queer lens. Sacred motifs are repurposed, mythological figures reimagined, and traditional iconography turned inward to render visible experiences that Indian cultural life has historically rendered invisible.

The result is neither confrontational nor reverential. It is something more considered: an insistence that queerness is not foreign to Indian identity but woven into its oldest stories - simply waiting to be seen.

Making Art as Claiming Space

Keshav Suri, Executive Director of The LaLiT and Founder of the Keshav Suri Foundation, frames the exhibition as an act of active inclusion rather than passive support.

"Inclusion is woven into the DNA of The LaLiT," he said. "Unboxed is our way of handing over the mic, pulling up a seat, and making room for stories that challenge norms, spark conversations, and celebrate the power of being exactly who you are."

Art Junction, the gallery hosting the exhibition, has built a reputation for precisely this kind of programming - spotlighting women artists, rural artisans, neurodiverse creators, and survivors of marginalisation over the years. Unboxed 2.0 is a natural extension of that commitment.