please touch gently (zines, comics, ephemera)

Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, 05 Oct 2025 - 10 Jan 2026 

 ‘Please touch gently (zines, comics, ephemera)’ – the fifth exhibition in KNMA’s Young Artists of Our Times series, reconfigures the museum as a participatory archive. Curated by aqui Thami, Bharath Murthy, and himanshu s, with curatorial advisor Akansha Rastogi, Associate Director, Visual Arts, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, the exhibition foregrounds self-publishing, underground circulation, and the spirit of DIY. 

Offering a deep dive into the subcultures of zines and comics making in India, it brings together contributions from over a thousand zinesters, comics artists, illustrators, feminists, and independent publishers in 22 languages. Visitors are invited to handle and explore these materials, reversing the conventional “do not touch” museum mandate. Zines and comics emerge as critical tools of pedagogy, memory, dissent, and community formation, while their post-exhibition integration into KNMA’s library embeds these fragile yet potent makers with distinct propositions, it unfolds as a constellation of experiments in storytelling. As resistance, as survival, as ways of being, doing, undoing, talking back, taking back. Fearlessly. Unapologetically. 

Also, within this constellation sits Chapaghar by aqui Thami and a makers’ space where the rhythms of print and the sheltering essence of ghar (home) converge. The photocopier becomes a vessel of intimacy and co-creation, inviting visitors to leave imprints that dissolve boundaries between self and collective expression. please touch gently (zines, comics, ephemera) will also be accompanied by a colloquium and a fair. 

https://www.knma.org/whats-on/exhibitions/please-touch-gently-zines-comics-ephemera/