Jahangir Asgar Jani

Jahangir Asgar Jani is a self-taught artist whose work is primarily concerned with the vexations of being labelled into a group, identity, or affiliation. Jahangir’s life has been a journey from riches to rags, from escapism to self-discovery and awareness, from being unsuccessful to having job security, from a growing restlessness to an encounter with the world, and finally to revelation through art, poetry, and film.

The artist’s visual vocabulary makes misalignments and disorientations of religion and sexuality explicit. Jani summons visible markers of identity to evoke various past and present struggles and triumphs, not for any universalizing proclamations but so that he may speak on his own behalf. In a sense, the artist deconstructs private obsessions and codes of communication that have been developed consciously or subconsciously due to associations with identity. Thus, by using his work as a process of internal inquiry, his works and artistic styles have transgressed the stereotypical and reached beyond the realms of conditioning and notions. Jahangir’s oeuvre shows fluidity, a refusal to be defined, and fearlessness that stems from the artist’s innocence and investigations.

He earned his Bachelor of Commerce from Mumbai University in 1977. His career spans multiple disciplines, including sculpture, painting, and film. He has had 18 solo exhibitions since (1990) and has participated in numerous group shows in India and abroad. His critically acclaimed works have been featured in various publications, including Alternate Lyricism (Mapin India), Twentieth Century Indian Sculpture, Articulating Resistance, Art and Activism, and KHOJ BOOK (2010).

His short films have been screened at festivals across India, the USA, the UK, Canada, Korea, and Europe. His film Urmi won Best Indian Narrative Short at the Kashish MIQ Film Festival, Mumbai (2013). Jani was awarded the prestigious Max Planck–TISS Fellowship (2012) under the Urban Aspirations in Global Cities collaboration. His submission was the runner-up for the AFA Alkazi Photo Book Grant (2023).

He has been a visiting lecturer at Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris (2003), and has participated in national and international seminars, residencies, and artist camps. He has been conferred the Diversity Leadership Award by the World HRD Congress, USA, in 2016 for his work in the field of gender and sexuality diversity through his art practice.

His selected exhibitions include Delhi Contemporary Art Week with LATITUDE 28, Bikaner House, New Delhi (2024 & 2023); Pareidolia: Songs of (Dis)belief presented by Bhavna Kakar at LATITUDE 28 (2022).

The artist is represented by LATITUDE 28, New Delhi, India.