In April 2023, with 1.429 billion people, India, the world’s fifth-largest economy, surpassed China as the world’s most populous country. What does this say about the nation’s art ecology? Does it translate to a proliferation of art galleries? A thriving art market? A flourishing of art schools? A diversity of art practices? With her training in both anthropology and art history, and based on decades of fieldwork in Mumbai and Delhi, Karin Zitzewitz has written an excellent and lavishly illustrated book that examines how artists in India, over seventeen prosperous years before a market crash, have put themselves on the global contemporary art map through the development of an art infrastructure that is in direct dialogue with the social and economic changes that swept the country in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Using the very methods on which she reports, through her friendships and discussions with artists, not just in India but across the globe, as well as personal observations of the Indian art world, she has crafted a picture of the interconnected world in which Indian artists live and practice their art.

The word infrastructure is rich and diverse in meaning and can be taken both literally and figuratively. Zitzewitz describes it as “assemblages of human and non-human entities, in which people and things, practices and discourses share agency” (8). This definition is a clever way to frame the ways in which artists in India work as a community and produce artworks that speak about local concerns and are also engaged with the condition of the world. Climate change, waste disposal, water systems, mobility, class struggles, urban growth, technology, and even the “MeToo,” movement are issues facing all Indian citizens in an overpopulated country, but they also affect how India engages with the rest of the planet. Infrastructure and lack thereof are literally at the heart of how Indian people navigate their world and, as Zitzewitz articulates, is the condition that makes art possible. Thanks to infrastructure, artists can travel, partake in international biennale art fairs, and show their work in museums. Infrastructure in this sense is not only physical and architectural as in roads, highways, and air traffic, but also, among the more interesting examples in the book, takes the form of rumor and gossip. Art talk travels through and influences the conversations that take place within and outside of the art community and informs the discourses that shape the theoretical frameworks upon which artworks are imparted by critics. In a figurative sense, infrastructure becomes richer and more nuanced. Artists not only create their own networks and therefore their own infrastructure, but infrastructure also becomes the form of art itself. Dialogic and performative works, new media installations, cross-border correspondence, recycled objects, and digital technology—not to mention paintings that depict highways and motor vehicles—are all about infrastructure itself. Infrastructure is the armature that builds and frames the art world and the system through which artists and artworks circulate in India.

The book doesn’t just explain how and what Indian contemporary art came to be; it also creates coherence among the various actors that shape that contemporary art world. Zitzewitz provides a compelling picture of the projects that curators, artists, gallerists, and collectors have created to make visible the transformations of their social and cultural landscape over the course of the past thirty years. Her approach is novel as it provides a more holistic view of the sites of artistic production and display in South Asia instead of isolating artworks not only from the public but also from art historical discourse. That said, this study should in no way be mistaken for an Indian version of Sarah Thornton’s popular Seven Days in the Art World. It is not a “Who’s Who?” of the art world nor is it an analysis of the art market, although the market does figure as a component of the art infrastructure. Rather, it theorizes the relationships between the conditions that make art possible and highlights its  form.

The book is divided neatly into five chapters that—as the theme of the book does— connect and feed into one another in surprising ways. Just when I thought I understood the definition of infrastructure and believed that it was therefore redundant after the introduction, Zitzewitz repeatedly caught me off guard as the book unfolded. This not only made the book enjoyable to read, but also difficult to put down. With careful selection of contemporary theories to back her arguments, Zitzewitz connects artists with the most pertinent and pressing issues that concern India today, demonstrating a sharp eye for recognizing the importance of certain artists’ projects described in clear and concise detail. Moreover, while many readers may be familiar with the artists that populate the book, few would have encountered such a vivid picture of the interconnected webs between these artists and the social, economic, political, and cultural climate in which they live.

Chapter one connects the installation and performance works of Nalini Malani (b. 1946), Nilima Sheikh (b. 1945), Pushpamala N (b. 1956), and Rummana Hussain (1952–1999) to articulations of feminism, female labor, and new geographies for artistic exchange. Chapter two looks at the image-based works of Atul Dodiya (b. 1959), Jitish Kallat (b. 1974), T.V. Santosh (b. 1968), Rashid Rana (b. 1968), and Ranbir Kaleka (b. 1953). The chapter considers the image condition, the technologies of art circulation, and related controversies to be a form of infrastructure. It also examines the reterritorializing and deterritorializing of representational forms and relates the ever-present debate of popular versus fine art to systems of communication. Among the more salient examples is the image and body politics of independence leader and anticolonial activist Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) which “resonates powerfully in a post-liberalization moment in which hedonistic pleasure and visceral response once more occupy a central place in political discourse” (70). The chapter also discusses Rashid Rana’s mixed media paintings and his participation in the first exhibition of Pakistani art held in India, Beyond Borders (National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai), which speaks to the circulation of images across the region and its political divisions. Chapter three considers the repurposing of everyday objects in the works of Subodh Gupta (b. 1964), Sheela Gowda (b. 1957), and Anita Dube (b. 1958). From Gowda’s use of cowpies or dung cakes as symbols of purification, Dube’s velvet envelopes over bones, and Gupta’s large-scale sculptures made of kitchen utensils, these artists, as Jane Bennett has theorized, privilege the experience of matter as a commentary on capitalism.

The chapters get better and better as one reads along. Chapter four examines the use of language as form in the discursive-driven practices of Amar Kanwar (b. 1964), Raqs Media Collective—Jeebesh Bagchi (b. 1965), Monica Narula (b. 1969), and Shuddhabrata Sengupta (b. 1968)—and Shilpa Gupta (b. 1976). These artists point to the absurdity and contradictions in public messaging. It is in this chapter and the next that the notion of infrastructure as form becomes more apparent as these artists employ and deploy infrastructure as a network, and conversely or dialectically rely on local infrastructure, such as community as an object. Chapter five further develops the concepts of networks in the forms of debate, institutions, and markets, and the relationship between human experience and infrastructure with works by Vivan Sundaram (1943–2023), Atul Bhalla (b. 1964), and Navjot Altaf (b. 1949). Zitzewitz argues that these artists understand the river as a network both literally and figuratively, as patterns of capital flow and water distribution create debates, institutions, and markets. Finally, the book concludes by bringing into the discussion the brilliant Mithu Sen (b. 1971) and her projects that embody the ideas that form the core of Zitzewitz’ book. Sen knows how to exploit her performative skills to create an audience. In one instance, she created her own fictive gibberish language as a commentary on communication and class consciousness. A more endearing and amusing work called Free Mithu made extensive use of Facebook and a concept she calls “radical hospitality” that played with the rhetoric of the art market. Sen’s embrace of chance and humorous wordplay came to its pinnacle when “MeToo” hit the Indian art community; the pun being that Mithu’s name is a homonym of the movement’s title.

Zitzewitz’s keen observations of the ways in which infrastructural changes impart art and how art and aesthetic forms reveal the aesthetic movements within India’s infrastructure are a model for how to theorize contemporary art systems worldwide that rely on, and also fluctuate, following the whims of markets, biennales, galleries, museums and art schools. The book is a must-read for students and scholars of South Asia and global art history, and those interested in how current issues influence the development of contemporary art practices.