Lodhi Art Festival unfolds: Public art learns to live with the city

Ten years since it first reimagined a residential neighbourhood as an open-air gallery, Lodhi Art District returns this February with a more complex confidence.

Presented by St+art India Foundation in association with Asian Paints, the 2026 edition of the Lodhi Art Festival marks a decade of Lodhi Art District as India's first public art district. Over the past ten years, the area has evolved into a landmark urban commons, now home to more than 65 murals integrated into everyday residential life. Anchored in the ethos of 'Art for All', the festival positions public art as accessible, lived, and continuous rather than simply event-led.

Curated around the theme Dilate All Art Spaces, the anniversary edition brings together Indian and international artists to extend the district's role as a site of artistic exchange, dialogue, and experimentation with public mediums of art.

This week, the idea is playing out visibly across Lodhi Colony, as international artists JuMu (Germany), Elian Chali (Argentina), and Pener (Poland) work across walls from Block C through D of Lodhi Colony.

In Lodhi, walls arrive with conditions. Trees interrupt sightlines, and arches frame compositions. Electric wires cast moving shadows across freshly painted surfaces. For artists accustomed to controlling their compositions, these interruptions become part of the negotiation - or elements to actively work with.

German artist Jurena Muoz 'JuMu' was presented with one such challenge: a large tree partially blocking her wall. While artists often form strong attachments to their assigned surfaces, treating them as canvases, Lodhi's infrastructure resists this framing. The tree, which has stood in the colony for decades, is non-negotiable. JuMu's response has been to adapt rather than erase.

Her mural unfolds as a market scene populated by women from 'Abya Yala', a decolonial term for Latin America that she references, alongside Indian figures, visually connected through textiles - something that has a deep history in both cultures, bridging them together.

Drawing from Peruvian, Chilean, and Indian patterns, the mural treats fabric as a shared cultural language rather than ornament.

Textiles, JuMu explains, function as repositories of memory, labour, and identity. Painted across an arched facade, the figures appear in motion, reinforcing the idea of exchange between cultures, geographies, and the street itself. The mural settles into its surroundings as it comes up, allowing architecture and environment to shape how it is read.

For Argentine artist Elian Chali, the city itself dictated a departure from his usual visual vocabulary. Known for abstract murals built around a consistent six-colour palette, Chali chose restraint in Delhi, opting for two colours instead.

He describes the city as visually and sonically dense—noisy and busy—which prompted him to work against saturation rather than contribute to it. His Lodhi mural uses primarily blue and white, creating what he calls a "silent contrast" within a crowded urban field. The blue allows the work to merge at moments with the sky, receding rather than asserting itself.

This tonal restraint marks a shift in Chali's practice. While his earlier murals relied on high contrast and sharp geometry, the Lodhi wall softens those boundaries, allowing colours to bleed into one another. Black outlines, a first for the artist, trace abstract forms inspired by the electric cables that frame the street, incorporating rather than ignoring the chaos around the wall.

Completed this week, the mural continues to change through the day, as shadows from wires and trees animate its surface. For Chali, this adaptation to the city's language is central to public art: once the wall starts the conversation, the city completes it—in this case, the electrical cable wires criss-crossing across his abstract scene.

Polish artist Bartek Witecki 'Pener’ is still in progress. His approach to the wall is through abstraction and colour. Working in steady daily shifts, Pener draws his palette from the immediate surroundings, sampling greens, blues, and warm tones from Lodhi's trees, buildings, and skies.

Unlike political street art, Pener avoids explicit messaging. His work is driven by what he describes as energy exchange: between colour, form, and the people who encounter the wall. While his recent murals elsewhere have leaned into sharp contrast, Lodhi has pushed him towards softer transitions and layered tones.

That shift, he says, comes from proximity. Unlike festivals where artists move between hotel rooms and scaffolding, Lodhi encourages interaction. Residents stop to talk, observe, and return across days. The mural becomes a process rather than a reveal, shaped as much by presence as by paint.

Across Lodhi Art District, these approaches share a common condition: the walls are not isolated stages. They exist within a living neighbourhood, one that continues to function even as it becomes a site of art.

This coexistence is what has defined Lodhi over the past decade. Walking around over the course of this month-long festival, spectators and art lovers can find new murals coming up across the colony, potentially interact with artists, and find various activities, workshops, or performances dotted around the district that they may sign up for or casually witness on their stroll.