Manish Nai: In Search of Material Within Material

Leila Heller Gallery Dubai presents In Search of Material Within Material, an exhibition by Indian artist Manish Nai (b. 1980, Gujarat), on view in Alserkal Avenue from 23 September to 10 November 2026. Working with materials that are both modest and distinctly Indian — jute, newspaper, used clothes, old books, and found or rusted corrugated metal sheets — Nai compresses, reshapes and reconfigures them into sculptural and pictorial forms. His practice highlights transformation, preserving the material’s history and memory while its form becomes entirely new. The exhibition brings together watercolours on paper and Arches paper, works in found and rusted corrugated metal and wood, painted aluminium mounted on stainless steel mesh, acrylic paint on plastic netting and on corrugated aluminium sheets, and a sculpture of used clothes and teak wood, dating from 2021 to 2026.