“Non-Residency,” a group exhibition at the Jaipur Center for Art (JCA), was organized by Rajiv Menon Contemporary. Courtesy Jaipur Centre for Art and Rajiv Menon Contemporary

As art market contraction became undeniable, few young galleries had the nerve to open and even fewer managed to find early success. One notable exception is Rajiv Menon Contemporary, a new L.A.-based gallery dedicated to bringing contemporary South Asian and diasporic art to the United States. Since opening in 2023, Menon has quickly carved out a place within the L.A. art ecosystem and beyond, presenting work by some of the most compelling South Asian artists of the last generation, including Surendran Nair, Bhasha Chakrabarti, Anoushka Mirchandani, Vikrant Bhise, Tarini Sethi and Viraj Khanna, while also serving as a conduit for introducing young South Asian and Indian artists to U.S. audiences and vice versa.

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With ambitious programming, a clear curatorial vision and dealer Rajiv Menon’s relentless drive, the gallery has already attracted institutional attention, securing at least six museum acquisitions in its first year, including placements at the Portland Museum of Art, Bunker Art Space, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami. Several more placements are in the advanced stages of negotiation.

Menon is now making his professional debut in his homeland, India, with “Non-Residency,” a group exhibition opening August 9 at the Jaipur Center for Art (JCA)—a striking venue rooted in tradition yet oriented toward the contemporary, set against the regal backdrop of The City Palace. Observer caught up with the dealer just days before the opening of the show, which marks the first time a gallery has independently taken over the entire palace grounds for a single, self-curated exhibition. Featuring works by sixteen artists across painting, sculpture and textiles, the exhibition also represents the first expansive, curated platform dedicated to a generation of contemporary Indian diasporic artists working abroad—artists whose practices engage aesthetics deeply tied to identity and tradition while navigating the cultural crosscurrents of migration and globalization. Reflecting the diaspora’s role as a bridge between India and the West at a moment when Indian art is rapidly rising on the global stage, the show becomes a powerful collective act of homecoming.

“I felt that there was so much good art coming out of South Asia and the South Asian diaspora, but there were dedicated spaces where these works were being contextualized in conversation with each other, particularly on the West Coast,” Menon tells Observer. “There was a movement forming; I could feel it. It felt necessary to create a space that recognized this momentum and facilitated understanding it as something larger than any individual practice.”

Before opening his gallery, Menon—the first-generation son of Indian immigrants—was already an avid collector of South Asian art, closely tracking the rise of South Asian talent in the U.S. After earning his PhD from New York University, where he studied global media and visual culture with a focus on South Asian art, he recognized that a kind of collective school was beginning to emerge in North America. “The goal was........

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