[At the 2025 edition of ART MUMBAI, India’s premier international art fair, Lufthansa partnered with five contemporary Indian artists to explore how travel inspires creativity. Their journeys across global cultural capitals—including New York, Berlin, Paris, and San Francisco—culminated in a special exhibition at ART MUMBAI in Mumbai.]

For ART MUMBAI’s third and largest edition yet, the fair joined hands with Lufthansa becoming the ultimate stop on the airline’s ‘All It Takes is a Yes’ campaign. Over the year, five contemporary Indian artists were flown to iconic cities across the globe, and in November, a royal blue gallery within ART MUMBAI’s ‘Arches’ became their final destination, displaying the artwork inspired by each global location.

Paris, New York, Berlin and San Francisco were brought to Mumbai with transportive travel posters. From Santanu Hazarika’s “city that moves like jazz” – a visual diary of New York where chaos meets flair – to Omkar Patil’s vibrant, larger-than-life illustrations capturing how travel “opens the mind, sparks creativity, and connects us to the world,” each work becomes a window into the deeply personal relationship between movement and imagination.

Hazarika’s interpretation of New York reflects the rhythm and improvisation associated with the city itself - where no two corners are the same, yet connect perfectly. Like a piece of jazz, the energy is fluid, layered, and unpredictable – a place where different cultures, sounds, and stories collide to create something constantly evolving. Iconic New York motifs flash within a compounded context of colour and chaos.

For Patil, travel catalyses creativity; his illustrations are an expansion of the wonder his trip inspired. He realises his imagination through an elastic outlines of Europe, scaling the details of what makes its cities unique - blowing up the small moments and building a kaleidoscopic world of experience. By observing new landscapes, people, and everyday rituals, his work reflects how encountering the unfamiliar can reshape perspective and inspire bold visual storytelling.

Artists Thukral & Tagra take a more introspective route, exploring both the inner and outer journey that begins with a simple “yes.” Inspired by their time in Germany, their work unfolds across passport pages and imagined vistas, reflecting on how travel encourages openness – to cultures, ideas, and unexpected experiences. Their narrative suggests that every journey begins not only with a destination, but with a willingness to embrace the unknown.

Meanwhile, Chaaya Prabhat reveals the spirit of San Francisco into A City in Layers, a tribute to a place where cultures, stories, and skylines stack, lean, and incline. Through colour and composition, the work reflects the dynamic coexistence of neighbourhoods, histories, and identities that define the city - with hues of happiness, Prabhat showcases a San Francisco of levity and ambition.

Together, these artists chart a world where travel and creativity are inseparable. Their works remind us that the journey itself is the destination, and that travel is not only about the places we visit, but the stories we carry forward. It is precisely this exchange of ideas, perspectives, and lived experiences that finds a natural home at ART MUMBAI; a cultural anchor where artists, collectors, and audiences from across the world converge. Within the fair, these journeys extended beyond the individual artwork, sparking cross-cultural dialogue and new connections. With this partnership, travel finds a departure from its definition as ‘movement’ and lands into a space of shared creativity and connection.