Kaalchakra, an immersive installation curated by Daksh Goel and Oishi Roy Dutta, was designed by OSA Studio. It was selected for the Festival’s Partners Programme under the Launch Pad initiative. As part of the Partners Programme, Daksh’s work was featured in the festival’s official lineup, which provided participants with international visibility and engagement with diverse audiences.
Kaalchakra interprets time as a cyclical and layered phenomenon, drawing from Indian philosophies and architectural traditions. Through its contemporary form, Daksh invited audiences to experience time as space in an evocative and experiential way.
The London Design Festival, now in its 23rd edition, is among the most prestigious international forums for celebrating creativity, design, and innovation. Held annually every September, it brings together designers, architects, and artists from across the globe and provides a vital stage for new ideas and cultural exchange.
About the Exhibition — This exhibition draws from South Asian cosmologies and ecological rhythms, where time is seen as cyclical rather than linear. The ‘Kaalchakra’ or wheel of time echoes the Earth’s rotations, lunar phases, and the pulse of breath and blood. Unlike the modern view of time as a line with beginnings and ends, it proposes a return to organic rhythms that shape bodies, ecosystems, and memory. Here, twenty-four artists become metaphors for the twenty-four hours of the day, unfolding across a continuous loop. Through sound, sculpture, installation, and image, they evoke rain, heat, decay, stillness, and bloom. The exhibition frames time not as something to conquer but to inhabit. To live cyclically is to allow for return: of seasons, emotions, and selves. ‘Kaalchakra’ resists resolution, inviting us to join an ongoing, natural rhythm that situates us within the cosmic spectrum.
The set has been meticulously designed and curated by OSA Studio. The chosen venue, The Asylum Chapel, also known as Caroline Gardens Chapel, was built between 1826 and 1833 and now serves as both setting and artwork in itself. Here, artists are invited to respond directly to the surrounding architecture. The space is structured into a spiral using 200 wooden chairs from the 1920s, creating a rhythm of movement and pause. Each artwork guides the audience to the next, unfolding like seasons of emotion. This spiral arrangement becomes a metaphor for a clock, a skeletal form of chairs that evokes the passage of time while imbuing the chapel with a rustic, atmospheric presence. Within this framework, art and architecture converge, layered and juxtaposed into a single immersive experience.
Curators: Daksh Goel, Oishi Roy Dutta
Exhibition Design & Architecture: OSA Studio
Sound Design: Ma Pak Yin (Momo)
Artists: Adriette Myburgh, Afrasinei Alexandra Maria, Alejandra Miguel Dada, Anais Öst, Ankita Kashyap, Ece Batur, Hamza, Harith Wilson, Jasmine Dhika, José Cárdenas Lorca, Junghun Lee, Kai Yan Cheung, Lang Jin, Marleigh Belsley, Meet Ahluwalia, Nikhar Yadav, Ross Deeley, Sadie Amelie Rees, Sakshi Sharma, Sham Salim (Aslam Sham Architects), Shubhangam Singh, Shubhangi Saxena, Victoria Kosasie, Yihan Pan
