Ashima Dhir Sehgal: The lawyer making her mark on the international art scene

(Oct 15, 2026) A practising lawyer and self-taught contemporary artist, Ashima Dhir Sehgal brings an eye for evidence and interpretation to an artistic practice shaped by memory, material and transformation. From her first solo exhibition in New Delhi to international art platforms in Munich, Genoa, New York and Bali, she has built a creative career alongside law, exploring what places and objects retain long after the lives that shaped them have moved on.

For Ashima Dhir Sehgal, the journey from New Delhi to international art platforms has been as much about finding her own language as finding an audience. Her solo exhibition in India, What Was Here?, held recently at Bikaner House in New Delhi, brought together more than 30 works across textile, photography, sculpture and installation. The exhibition explored how places and objects might retain traces of the lives that have passed through them, bringing together a body of work that moves beyond geography to consider memory, time and transformation.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Ashima D Sehgal (@ads.artstudio)

Reading the traces of time

The origins of What Was Here? lie in Naggar, Himachal Pradesh, where Sehgal spent time during an artist residency. Looking closely at old wood, she became absorbed by its grain, worn surfaces and carved details, wondering whether these physical changes might be understood as a kind of memory. The marks were evidence of something that had happened, even when the event itself was no longer accessible.

This observation gradually developed into an enquiry into how materials register time, touch and transformation, and what they continue to hold after the people and circumstances that shaped them have disappeared.

I am drawn to what people and places leave behind: a worn surface, a discarded thread, a material altered by use. “In What Was Here?, these encounters become an enquiry into memory and silence.

Ashima Dhir Sehgal

Historic architecture became an important starting point for this exploration, not simply as a record of the past but as a repository of details that are easy to overlook. Sehgal is drawn to the proportions of an opening, the rhythm of a carved panel or the way a shadow interrupts a surface. Often, it is a fragment rather than an entire building that holds her attention, prompting her to consider what might be lost when we look at architecture only as a complete structure.

When materials become storytellers

Photography provides the initial record, but it is only the beginning of the process. In her studio, Sehgal transfers images onto silk organza, layering the translucent fabric and introducing hand embroidery. As the layers accumulate, some details become more pronounced while others recede. The image becomes a surface on which visibility, concealment and material presence continually shift.

Silk organza offers transparency, while ash and charcoal carry the consequences of burning. Cocoons suggest enclosure and transformation, and discarded threads retain traces of their earlier use even as they become part of new forms. These materials are stitched, stained, burnt, perforated and unravelled, with the physical process influencing the direction of the work.

“Meaning develops through that exchange between my intention and what the material makes possible,” Sehgal explains. “Silk shifts, threads tangle, and an opening can change the balance of an entire piece.”

From images to an immersive experience

The exhibition culminates in a house installation that invites visitors to enter the work rather than simply observe it. Made through fragments, textiles, light and suspended threads, the space brings Sehgal’s enquiry into material memory into a physical encounter. Visitors can move among the threads and examine their textures, yet the histories behind them remain partly inaccessible. This tension between proximity and uncertainty is central to the work.

“I wanted visitors to slow down and feel surrounded by the threads hanging from the roof,” she says. “Moving among them creates a sensory encounter, making material memory something experienced through the body.”

Conversations with Lekha Poddar, founder of the Devi Art Foundation, and curatorial guidance from Pooja Sood, one of the founding members of Khoj, helped Sehgal understand how individual works might function together as a larger whole. Their discussions helped her decide what to include, how to frame the works and where to leave room for ambiguity rather than explain every association.

“Their mentorship also helped me distinguish between what needed to be articulated and what needed room to remain open,” she says. “I became more confident in allowing the works, and the relationships between them, to carry the thinking without explaining every association.”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Ashima D Sehgal (@ads.artstudio)

Finding audiences across borders

That openness has also shaped the way Sehgal understands her work’s international reception. She has exhibited at platforms including the Serendipity Arts Festival and Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in India, ARTMUC in Munich, Arte Genova, the Sanremo Biennale and MAD in New York. These encounters have brought her work before audiences who approach it through different cultural references and personal experiences.

One viewer may recognise a cultural reference; another enters through texture, form or feeling. Those responses make me more attentive to how the work communicates beyond its original context.

Ashima Dhir Sehgal

Representing India at ARMA Museum in Bali and having six of her works enter the collection of Museum Pasifika have strengthened her confidence in pursuing this enquiry across cultures. She sees her practice as contributing to a wider conversation about material memory, time and transformation, while remaining attentive to her own experiences. Selection for the 21st Arte Laguna Prize in 2026 and the Florence Biennale 2027 in Fibre Art offers further opportunities for exchange and experimentation.

The lawyer’s eye, the artist’s questions

Sehgal’s willingness to enter unfamiliar territory is also evident in her life beyond the studio. She began her professional career as a young lawyer, stepped away from the profession for motherhood and eventually returned to legal practice while her children were still at school. She continues to practise law alongside her work as an artist, navigating two disciplines that demand different kinds of attention but share an interest in evidence, interpretation and the limits of what can be known.

Law taught me that what is said and what remains unsaid both hold weight. It trained me to examine evidence, question assumptions and recognise how easily an incomplete account can be mistaken for the whole truth.

Ashima Dhir Sehgal

Although law and art involve different forms of enquiry, Sehgal sees room for the habits of observation and interpretation that connect them. In the courtroom, evidence must be examined and assumptions questioned. In her studio, the traces left on materials prompt similar questions about what can be seen, what remains concealed and what cannot be fully recovered.

Motherhood, reinvention and a self-taught practice

Motherhood has been equally central to the way Sehgal has shaped her life and negotiated its different demands. Taking time away from law to raise her children meant returning to a profession in which she had to rebuild her place, while her growing interest in art required her to learn a new discipline without formal training. Rather than seeing these chapters as competing identities, Sehgal has continued to make room for each of them.

“Being a mother is central to who I am, and I treasure time with my family,” she says. Away from work, she enjoys music, travelling, discovering new places and spending time with friends. Her family remains an important part of her life even as she continues to explore new directions professionally and creatively.

Her move into art was itself an exercise in beginning again. Self-taught, she developed her practice through experimentation, residencies and conversations with other practitioners. Her first group exhibition proved an important turning point. She arrived at the gallery to find red dots beside five of her works, an unexpected affirmation that something she had made privately had connected with people she had never met.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Ashima D Sehgal (@ads.artstudio)

As a self-taught artist, I learnt that I did not have to feel completely ready before showing my work. Sharing it became part of my education, and each exhibition gave me the courage to take the next step.

Ashima Dhir Sehgal

Since then, she has participated in more than 40 exhibitions and art platforms in India and abroad. Being self-taught has required her to take responsibility for her own education, but it has also allowed her to experiment across mediums without feeling bound to one established method. She values critical dialogue and mentorship while remaining attentive to the questions that first draw her to a material or place.

Her journey has involved returning to a profession after stepping away, building a creative practice without formal training and continuing to test what her work might become. Her art does not attempt to recover every story that time has obscured. Instead, it asks viewers to pay closer attention to what remains, and to consider how much of a place’s history might be carried in the smallest, most easily overlooked trace.

• Follow Ashima Dhir Sehgal on Instagram 
• To know more about Ashima Dhir Sehgal, visit her website

ALSO READ: From scientific labs to artistic canvas: Rahul Mitra’s multifaceted journey