TARQ is delighted to present खारी गाबोली | Salted Caviar, a solo exhibition by artist Parag Tandel, accompanied by a text by Natasha Ginwala. Spanning sculpture, cyanotype, textile, and archival research, the exhibition brings together four new bodies of work that move between geological deep time, living knowledge systems, and the ecological and political struggles of Mumbai's Koli fishing communities.
In the Salt Shrines series (2026), vibrantly hued yarn and found elements are wound onto metal armatures to create multi-layered sculptural figures that crystallise Koli votive traditions, nature worship, and multispecies cosmologies — evoking the Bharali Puja ceremonies held at full moon each October. Alongside these, Tandel works with Habur stone, a fossiliferous material from Jaisalmer that was once an ancient seabed, to cast oil pipes and marine life-forms in cooling, mottled rock — drawing a sharp poetics between petrocapitalist extraction and the Koli community's embattled relationship with the coastline. The stone becomes a monument to an erased ocean, connecting the geological history of the Rajasthani desert with the ecological memory of Mumbai's shores.
In the Vitamin-Sea Archives: SEDIMENTS OF INTELLIGENCE (2026), the stone becomes an archival potli, gathering geologic memory alongside technocratic encroachments on the hydrosphere. Speculative cyanotypes address the desalination of seawater for data centres and artificial intelligence infrastructure, weaving together coral reefs, marine organisms, undersea cables, and shipwrecks into a kind of reverse-engineered cartography of the ocean floor. The Worli Koliwada series (2026) assembles oral histories, archaeological records, and meticulously illustrated recipes — drawing on the Koli diet and his mother Kamal Tandel's kitchen — to position food as an archaeological site and endangered epistemology. In Estuaries of Waning Sounds: Koli Dictionary Project (2025–26), woven fish-net sculptures animated by shells, knots, and found elements give form to a growing Koli language lexicon, where indigenous words are recovered not only in script but in cadence and vibration. A soft floor piece, Sea of Relations (2026), affirms the Koli worldview as one that is horizontal and seamless — founded on movement, interdependence, and lateral kinship with the sea.
“[Parag] brings forth an ensemble of aural autoethnography of neighbourhood tales, coastal livelihoods, indigenous rhythms, and underwater chronicles as communal pursuits of knowledge gathering. . . It is via the embodied lens of brine that I view this praxis emerge; its conceptual and material character resonant with a more-than-human hydrocommons, livelihood struggles of Koli fisherfolk, spatial justice and reimaginations of ocean-centered sovereignty.”, says Natasha Ginwala. Together, these works constitute an act of maritime reclamation — archiving what is disappearing, and insisting, through material and language alike, on the depth and continuity of Koli presence along this coastline.
About the Artist
Parag Tandel (b. 1978), is a Mumbai-based artist with a Postgraduate Diploma in Creative Sculpture from Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda (2005) and a Diploma in sculpture and modelling from Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai (2003).
Tandel’s solo exhibitions include Archipelagic Archivist, curated by Shaunak Mahbubani, TARQ, Mumbai (2023); Autopolisphilia, curated by Noopur Desai, Sudarshan art gallery, Pune (2018); Chronicle, TARQ, Mumbai (2016); and Pregnant Room 1 and Pregnant Room 2, both showcased at Pundole Art Gallery, Mumbai, 2008 and 2010 respectively.
Most recently, Tandel was part of a month-long residency at ZKM Karlsruhe where he developed works in response to the space, shown as a part of ZKM’s exhibition Assembling Grounds: Practices of Coexistence (2025-2026), Fellow Travellers series. He also presented his work as part of Metta Pracruti at the 36th São Paulo Biennial, Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, Brazil.
Some of his recent group exhibitions include Makers & Materials curated by Leandro D’Souza and Dr. Keli Wood, Sunaparanta, Goa (2025); Conscious Collective, Godrej Design Lab, Mumbai (2025); The Artist As, curated by Vaidehi Gohil and Sonakshi Bhandari, TARQ, Mumbai (2025); The Sculpture Park curated by Peter Nagy, Jaigarh Fort, Jaipur (2025); the second edition of the Indian Ceramics Triennale, Arthshila (2024); The People of Mumbai, The CSMVS Gallery, Mumbai (2024); Entwined Edition 2 presented by Apparao Galleries, Bikaner House, New Delhi (2024); Critical Zones: In Search of a Common Ground, Goethe Institut, Mumbai and Kolkata (2022); New Natures: A Terrible Beauty is Born, curated by Ravi Agarwal, Goethe Institut, Mumbai (2022); All Canaries Bear Watching, curated by Premjish Achari, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (2022); Fragile Kinships, curated by Shaunak Mahbubani, the Swiss Embassy, New Delhi (2018); Baroda March, Mumbai (2015); Small is Beautiful, Tao Art Gallery, Mumbai (2012); The Art of Drawing, The Guild, Mumbai (2011); and AvaGard, Threshold Art Gallery, Delhi (2009) among others.
Tandel’s public art projects include How to Cook Bombay Duck in Various Ways?, outdoor installation at India Art Fair, represented by TARQ (2023); Vitamin-Sea, Mumbai Urban Art Festival, Mumbai (2022-2023); Tandel Fund of Archives, pop-up museum of fisherfolk, Mumbai (2020 and 2019); (En)counters- Daily Rations Public art project, curated by Artoxygen, Breathing art works, Mumbai (2017); Geographies of consumptions, Mumbai (2015); Big Catch, Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, Mumbai (2012); and Sandarbh, Rajasthan (2011). Tandel has been a recipient of the Jhunjhunwala Scholarship Award (2003); Maharashtra State Art Award (2003); and All India Art and Craft Society State Award (2003). Additionally, he has participated in residencies at The Bamboo Curtain Studio, Taiwan (2018), Piramal Art Residency (2017), Space 118 (2015), Mumbai and in Partapur, Rajasthan.
He currently lives and works in Thane, Mumbai.
About Natasha Ginwala
Natasha Ginwala is a curator, researcher and writer. She is artistic director of Colomboscope in Sri Lanka since 2019 and curator of Current V: Ancestral Ocean at TBA21—Academy (2026-08). She previously served as Associate Curator at Large at Gropius Bau, Berlin (2018-2024) was also co-artistic director of the 13th Gwangju Biennale (2021). Ginwala was part of curatorial teams of Sharjah Biennial 16 (2025), Contour Biennale 8, documenta 14 (2017), 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2014), Taipei Biennale 2012, and other international exhibitions at e-flux, Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart, ifa Gallery, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, L’appartement 22, Sharjah Art Foundation, Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi, MCA Chicago, 56th Venice Biennale, SAVVY Contemporary and Zeitz MOCAA. Ginwala is a widely published author on contemporary art, visual culture, and social justice.
