Hyderabad to host Incandescent 2.0, a confluence of art, textiles and jewellery

Textile designer Sanjay Garg and jewellery designer Hanut Singh will present Incandescent 2.0, a meeting point of art, textiles and jewellery, in collaboration with the India Art Fair. Sanjay’s flagship store Raw Mango will host an all-day exhibition curated by Belgian designer and stylist, Isla Maria Van Damme.

The first edition of Incandescent was held in Delhi in 2023, showcasing Hanut’s jewellery with global aesthetics and Sanjay’s contemporary line of saris and garments worked upon by craft clusters in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Varanasi. Antique marble statues were used to display the statement jewellery pieces.

Hanut, whose jewellery has adorned personalities such as Madonna, Meryl Streep, Rihanna, Beyoncé and Kareena Kapoor, says working with Raw Mango and the India Art Fair “introduces structure, scale, and systems that are different from my usual rhythm. These collaborations also help me see my own work through a different lens, reframing how it’s presented and how people engage with it.”

Sanjay does not look at art, design, fashion and culture as compartmentalised silos: “Design is not just fashion and what’s visual. The idea of design is to create experiences that spark conversations on culture, heritage and history.”

Hanut, who hails from the Karputhala royal family in Punjab, reflects on his shared interests with Sanjay: “Many of my pieces are drawn from my time in the hills — their stillness, their organic forms, and that sense of awe at what reveals itself unexpectedly. For Sanjay too, Nature is a grounding force. You can see it in the way his Hyderabad store is anchored in a forest-like atmosphere.”

In his first showcase in the city, Hanut will be presenting a mix of classics and current explorations. “One of the standout pieces for me is the emerald windchimes; they combine technical artistry, with emeralds cut into delicate triangles, and a sense of lightness, movement, and balance.” Hanut’s design inspirations range from history to architecture and Nature, reflected as forms of daggers, swords, or leaves.

Sanjay and Hanut first collaborated for Raw Mango’s 2021 collection, Romantics. Sanjay recalls, “The collection was rooted in European influence on Indian saris. Textiles drew from the Rococo period, developing a new language of botanicals — flora and fauna — in woven form. It’s the same distinctly European language that influences Hanut’s work, it made perfect sense.”

Hanut says that their interests, rooted in craft, heritage, modernity, and luxury, helped them complement each other’s work. “Our languages may not seem like obvious companions at first glance, mine more maximal and Sanjay more of a minimalist, but they sit beautifully together — both drawing from the past while reimagining it for the present, with an eye to the future.”

They also discovered that they had clients in common — Kiran Rao, Mira Nair, and Karisma Kapoor. Hanut says, “So perhaps the challenge isn’t in the aesthetics themselves, but in the wearer — in whether she has the confidence to mix genres. Many of the women who inspire me, like Gayatri Devi or my grandmother, Sita Devi, did exactly that, pairing their chiffons with Cartier or Boucheron, rather than jadau or more traditional forms.”

Sanjay adds that the curation of found objects and textiles reflects how their perspectives exist together. As for choosing Hyderabad for the exhibition, Sanjay says it was one of Raw Mango’s earliest markets. “The city is an interesting mix of history and modernity. It is one of the most multicultural cities in the south — cosmopolitan, multilinguistic, even with their food.”

(Incandescent 2.0 will be on view at Raw Mango store, road no.1, Banjara Hills, on August 6)