Poonam Jain

WIP

'Mother Tongue in Anecdotes', held on 3 October last year, unfolded as an intimate gathering around our dialects. In conversation and collaboration with Poonam Jain, the evening opened with thinking about language as a dialect with a gun. Poonam assembled a dense spill of Devnagari and Kannada, punctuation, Latin types with spacers, rules from old presses, carrying the residue of their usage and time. In letterpress vocabulary, a 'hell box' is where damaged or jumbled types are kept, waiting to be sorted by the studio apprentice known as the Printer’s Devil. That night, we all became printer’s devils, sifting through memories, histories, and orality. We conversed, reflected, played, and gathered words, recognizing that we carry languages with their absences, fractures, and lingering ghosts. We talked about “practical literacy”, the everyday scripts of social contracts embedded in advertisements, shop signs, transactions, legal documents, textbooks, newspapers, tickets and others. Everyone brought a small anecdote like illegible official letters, the politics of accent, half-remembered proverbs, brand names heavy with nostalgia or desire, intimate encounters, familial stories. As the types were slowly sorted, like cleaning grains in a kitchen, stories turned into an assemblage of bolis, dialects, and memories-- whole and broken, shared across generations. Gatherers: Shruti, Priya, Maithili, Dakshita, Vanshika, Mohit, Anarya, Poonam, Priyesh, Zain, Priyank, Ritika, Akshay, Abhinav, Noopur, Sonam, Aksh, Aarushi, Sohail

Works by Mira Dayal & Poonam Jain Mira Dayal's 'reCAPTCHA series' reproduced, in ink on paper, text from Google's reCAPTCHAs used on websites to verify that a user is human. Also on view are 2 artist books by Dayal - 'Language Object Index' and 'Instructions; 9 Sculptures'. Poonam Jain's letterpress prints from her ongoing series 'Catalogue' look at the hierarchies of knowledge and script through the lens of colonial era letterpress printing technology. A selection of 26 prints resulting from these impressions are presented in this exhibition. Open to visitors until March 2, 2026

Thank you to everyone who joined us for the opening of the exhibition featuring works by @miradayal and @poonamfound Co-organized by @nihaal_faizal , the exhibition is now open at Mehrab Bookshop and will be on view until 2 March 2026. We look forward to welcoming you :)

We're excited to invite you all to the launch of the exhibition of works by artists Mira Dayal and Poonam Jain on December 20th from 5 -7 pm! Co-organized by artist Nihaal Faizal, their works will be exhibited from 20th December to 2nd March 2026. Mira Dayal's 'reCAPTCHA series' reproduced, in ink on paper, text from Google's reCAPTCHAs used on websites to verify that a user is human. Also on view are 2 artist books by Dayal - 'Language Object Index' and 'Instructions; 9 Sculptures'. Poonam Jain's letterpress prints from her ongoing series 'Catalogue' look at the hierarchies of knowledge and script through the lens of colonial era letterpress printing technology. A selection of 26 prints resulting from these impressions are presented in this exhibition. Drop by to check out their incredible work and celebrate this wonderful new addition to our space! 🌀 📅 20th December, Saturday 🕔 5 - 7 PM 📍Mehrab Bookshop, Kaloor-Kadavanthra Road. Location in bio.

do we have time as a culture for details that are not materially useful? Project Showcase@IFA with Poonam Jain Degrees of Exclusion of Languages December 10, 2025 | 06:30 PM IST 🔗Register through the link in our bio. Join us for our next showcase with artist Poonam Jain. In her project ‘Degrees of Exclusion of Languages’, Poonam traced the cultural histories, dilemmas, hierarchies, and erasures that languages navigate in order to survive. Implemented under the Arts Practice programme, the project examined the blurring of boundaries between habit and memory, looking at the histories of Mahajani or Modiya lipi (Marwari), Modi lipi (Marathi), Tamil numerals, Devanagari, and Kannada, and created letterpress types for some of them. Image Courtesy: Renuka Rajiv and Poonam Jain This session is organised as part of Project Showcase@IFA , a series of presentations to showcase, discuss and engage audiences with the diverse projects we support and implement across programmes. Project supported by Sony Pictures Entertainment Fund

The recent Peer Pollinations session with @shrutisarkar94 @poonamfound @eroded_ways on 10 Oct, prompted many stimulating conversations around the scope of an art practice, artist's life, practice and job feeding into one another, the peripheries of a medium, insecurities and vulnerabilities that we as artists share today, restricted mobilities through borders and the desire to connect with the others, negotiations between the pace of practice vis-à-vis the speed of a changing world.. The artists created a hybrid informal display of books, drawings, archival objects, alongside the presentation, reading of a travelogue> trip to Pakistan>> interactive gestures, drafts of ideas, and more! Images: @maithilibavkar @streetdog0506 🤍

Join us for the session on Friday, 10 Oct 2025, where the artists ~ @poonamfound @eroded_ways @shrutisarkar94 ~ will be sharing their practices. Dm to join. -- About//// Shruti Sarkar is a visual art practitioner and educator based in Delhi-NCR. Her research explores images of violence, spectatorship, and the management of bodies in a bio-political world. Her work entails archiving, walking, and documenting "uncared" city spaces and their inhabitants, challenging state-curated history. She teaches at Sushant University and curates for Half Walks. Poonam Jain (b.1989) is an artist based in Mumbai. She works with drawing, installation, text, and gestural works to foreground language and numbers as common denominators between divergent fields of pedagogy, economy and architecture. In her practice, she examines forms of counting in religion, politics, economics, and domestic settings, blurring the lines between these notional spaces to understand the micro-narrative formed by language. Swati Kumari is a visual practitioner based in Ghaziabad, India. She works across mediums such as drawings through carbon paper, soft sculptures, video, installations, letters, and books, she aims to trace the trajectory of generational tiredness in/of women’s bodies. Through her practice, she prompts and allows viewers to participate and activate the work by sitting, lying, resting, and conversing over it. Alongside, her artist books bring forth an intuitive response to her memories, surroundings, and situations located within the urban landscape. -- `Peer Pollinations` is a desire for an artist-run peer-led space in Delhi where peers, engaged in creative practice+research in the arts, can come together-- to share practice and ideas in the dual framework of an informal display + presentation of previous/ ongoing/ future ideas; to have a space for feedback, conversations and constructive critique amongst peers; to engage with ongoing practices and research happening in/around the field of visual arts in India; to uphold spaces of artistic exchange and transmission through collaboration, rhizomatic approaches, radical solidarity, self-organisation and resource redistribution.

first draft x Poonam Jain `Mother Tongue in Anecdotes ` – A gathering to explore stories, proverbs, idioms, myths and narratives in and/or about your dialects and mother tongue. The gathering, in conversation and collaboration with @poonamfound , will open up the idea of language 'as a dialect with a gun', alongside it's memories, history, practical literacy, orality, and more. We will come together to converse, reflect, play, and glean the words that contribute to the rich tapestry of language. It is essential to recognise that we carry languages and dialects -- along with their memories, absences and the lingering ghosts of the past. We will think through "practical literacy," — the scripts of social contracts found in advertisements, shop signs, transactions, legal documents, DTPs, textbooks, newspapers, tickets.. On one hand, there exists a "mother tongue", alongside various other languages that we, as South Asians, consider as a 'given' — how do we dwell within these tongues and find a sense of belonging among them? what distinguishes a script from a language, their the relationship? On the other hand, there exists orality, which is ever-present— sonic, emotional, lost and found — always surrounding us. We do not merely speak our tongues; we inherit them across generations. Join us for an evening to share your stories around your languages — official, unofficial, state-promoted, dominant, intimate or local. We invite you to come with the rich blend of languages as khichdi, chutneys, raitas of bolis, dialects, and memories— both whole and fragmented. Friday, 3 October 2025 @terrace.6464 , Delhi, India — Poonam Jain (b.1989) is an artist based in Mumbai. She works with drawing, installation, text, and gestural works to foreground language and numbers as common denominators between divergent fields of pedagogy, economy and architecture. In her practice, she examines forms of counting in religion, politics, economics, and domestic settings, blurring the lines between these notional spaces to understand the micro-narrative formed by language. — If you are interested to join / want to know more, dm us before 30 Sept ____ Images: @poonamfound

❤️ Bits of Feb and bits of March this year in Lahore and Islamabad with people I met and now cherish. I often joke about it but now it feels like I could have documented better. here is a token Bad photos are mine Good ones are by @fbk1184 @dill_riaz @faseehameer