Kiran Nadar Museum of Art’s please touch gently (zines, comics, ephemera) redefines what a museum can be. Showcasing works by over a thousand artists in 22 languages, the exhibition celebrates India’s zine, comic, and self-publishing culture. Through zines, comics, and ephemera, the exhibit captures both personal and collective memory, turning the museum into a living, participatory archive of independent voices.
Museums are often quiet tombs of history — places meant to be marvelled at, learnt from, and admired, but only from a respectful distance. Behind glass and under perfect lighting, art becomes sacred. We’re taught that only works of great historical or social value deserve that kind of preservation. But what about the movements that live on the margins? The stories too raw, too fleeting, or too personal to be canonised? Who decides which histories deserve glass and which remain in people’s hands, inked and alive?
Kiran Nadar Museum of Art’s ‘please touch gently (zines, comics, ephemera)’, the first of its scale and scope, displays the works of around a thousand artists in 22 languages. The showcase takes a deep dive into the Indian comic scene and the world of self-publishing, highlighting zinesters, comic artists, illustrators, and independent publishers. This exhibition, the fifth chapter in the museum’s Young Artists of Our Times series, is a deeply personal and intimate exploration of India’s zine and comic subculture.
Brought together by aqui Thami, Bharath Murthy, and himanshu s, with curatorial advisor Akansha Rastogi, the exhibition acts as a chamber that amplifies independent voices often lost in the mainstream.Its very premise is to create not just a showcase but a sensorium — a space where visitors are encouraged to interact with the pieces by touching, reading, or even creating their own. In doing so, it redefines what a museum can be.
The three elements of the exhibition — zines, comics, and ephemera — come together to form an archive of both personal and public memory. Zines, whose origins trace back to the Harlem Renaissance, have always been carriers of dissent: unfiltered, intimate, and symbolic of protest. From R.K. Laxman’s portrayal of the common man to the eternal nostalgia of Garfield, comic artists have long acted as mirrors to society. Ephemera — pamphlets, posters, and other “disposable” materials — capture fleeting moments, standing as stark snapshots of their time. Within the exhibition is also aqui Thami's 'Chapaghar', a 'maker's space' where visitors can also use the photocopier to leave their mark and bridge the gap between personal and public memory.
This space challenges you to reimagine what a museum can hold, and in turn, what culture should look like. I have always wanted to walk into a museum and be able to reach forward and interact with the relics I’m seeing around me, and of course it's human nature to want to do it more when you’re specifically told not to. But ‘please touch gently’ with its library-like personality, invites visitors not just to come and look, but to come, look, stay, touch, read — and linger.
‘please touch gently (zines, comics, ephemera)’ is on view till January 10, 2026 at Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Saket, New Delhi and is open to all. You can follow them on Instagram here.
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