A Cage Went in Search of a Bird: Architecture as Metaphor, a thought-provoking collective exhibition taking place at 1×1 Art Gallery, stages architecture not as a fixed backdrop but as a living metaphor. On display until 31 March 2026, the show prompts reflections on belonging, absence, freedom, and the traces that structures leave in our perceptual and emotional landscapes.
At the heart of the exhibition is a curatorial inquiry into how built forms carry and relinquish meaning: walls that once demarcated division, thresholds that once controlled access, the gridlines that discipline vision. Within this terrain of erasure and re-presence, architecture becomes a dynamic agent of thought and sensation, a frame that seeks release and redefinition beyond its conventional functions. The show draws its title from an aphorism associated with Franz Kafka, whose fragment “a cage seeking a bird” becomes a poetic thread throughout the works on display.
The exhibition brings together twelve contemporary artists whose practices engage with spatial, material, and conceptual dimensions of architecture and environment. Among the participants is Chittrovanu Mazumdar, an artist of Bengali-Indian and French descent who is known for immersive, multi-layered works that interweave memory, myth, and material complexity. His artwork Dream, Prometheus…(2018) reimagines mythic narrative through portable structures that echo the fluid interplay between light, human endeavour, and built form.
Gigi Scaria, whose sculptural and installation practice often addresses urban development and symbolic form, contributes Sprout (2024), a brass sculpture. It merges organic and architectural imagery and evokes resilience within modern cityscapes. Nida Bangash, an artist and art historian of Pakistani origin, showcases Bol (Speak) (2025), a work that uses artbooks and poetic form to explore themes of freedom, belonging, and language, framing the book’s physicality as a soaring, bird-like structure.
Vibha Galhotra, famous for material investigations into ecological fragility, displays Melting and Fragile (2024-25), a mixed-media piece that captures states of environmental and conceptual instability. Pooja Iranna, whose architectural assemblages converge urban form and ritual symbolism, presents Symphony 1 (2025), a piece that evokes monumental cycles and imagined built environments. Vivek Vilasini‘s Housing Dreams interrogates aspiration and surveillance through colour and pattern, exposing the sociopolitical undercurrents embedded in the built environment.
Also on view are works by Martand Khosla and Dilip Chobisa. Khosla’s dynamic etchings and sculptural works translate the velocity and fragmentation of contemporary urban life into charged lines and forms. Chobisa, by contrast, employs dramatic light and shadow to render constructed neighbourhoods uncanny, unsettling familiar ideas of habitation and comfort.
Additional contributors include such creatives as Pallavi Arora, Parul Sharma, Praveen Kumar, and M Pravat. Each brings distinct interventions in painting, installation, and video that expand the dialogue between metaphor, structure, and materiality.
To learn more about A Cage Went in Search of a Bird, please visit the official web page of the exhibition.
You might also be interested in exploring the following group exhibitions: Of Land and Water; Rays, Ripples, Residue; and Urdu Worlds.
