​DECODING DIGITAL DNA art exhibition by Mukesh Sharma

Sheesh Mahal (Triptych), 2024 acrylic, oil, hand-cut canvas collage on canvas, 72 × 96 in overall; 32 × 72 in each panel.

Decoding Digital DNA, the recently concluded solo exhibition by New Delhi - based artist Mukesh Sharma, opened on 18 December 2025 at the Main Art Gallery, Bikaner House, New Delhi,  India and remained on view for the public until 25 December 2025. The exhibition marked a significant moment in Sharma’s long-standing engagement with technology, materiality, and the ecological afterlife of digital consumption.

The exhibition witnessed a strong opening and an encouraging response from collectors, curators, critics, and prominent members of the art and cultural community. The opening preview itself, which saw nearly 50 percent of the works find new homes, is a testament to the collectors’ intuition and the viewers’ willingness to engage with the unfamiliar. Mukesh Sharma expresses humility at this response. For him, it was never about expectations, but about sparking a conversation. The exhibition was not only about the artworks themselves, but also about the spaces created and the dialogues they inspired. Sharma remains deeply grateful to have shared this journey with both collectors and audiences, who not only appreciated the work but also saw a reflection of our times within it.

At the heart of Decoding Digital DNA was an immersive environment constructed from technological detritus - keyboards, circuits, wires, chips, and other discarded digital components. Rather than treating these materials as waste, Sharma reimagined them as organic matter with renewed agency. The exhibition sparked engaged conversations around technology as a living presence - embedded in memory, behaviour, and identity and positioned digital materiality as an evolving layer of human existence. In doing so, the exhibition bridged concerns of ecology, sustainability, and post-human futures.

Decoding Digital DNA examined technology not as a tool, but as a living archive—one that absorbs human memory, behaviour, and identity over time. By transforming discarded digital components into immersive installations and mixed-media works, Sharma challenged conventional definitions of waste in a technology-driven world. Circuitry and data were presented as organic systems, blurring the boundaries between the mechanical and the living, and raising urgent questions around the environmental afterlife of gadgets and digital consumption.
As a conceptual framework, the exhibition also functioned as a subtle yet incisive commentary on contemporary life—entwined with smartphones, laptops, smartwatches, cables, keyboards, and other digital paraphernalia that no longer merely assist human activity but actively shape it. From tracking time to monitoring breath and heartbeat, digital devices increasingly mediate the most intimate aspects of existence.
Though Sharma is not a digital native—having been born and formally trained before the digital revolution reshaped everyday life—his practice does not romanticise technology. Instead, it critically examines how human beings are adapting to what he describes as a new addition to our DNA: the digital component. Almost like a fifth base in the building blocks of human DNA, this digital layer has become inseparable from cognition, memory, labour, and identity.
Through multi-layered installations using digital detritus, along with recently completed mixed-media paintings, Sharma reflects on the ecological and philosophical consequences of the age of technology and artificial intelligence. His work situates itself at a vital intersection between materiality, digital identity, and sustainability. It speaks to a generation whose memories, emotions, and neural networks are mediated through devices, and whose discarded components silently record histories of use, abuse, and evolution.
With a distinctive material intelligence, Sharma assembles and reassembles obsolete technological objects, transforming what is discarded into forms that feel tactile, pulsating, and alive. His works offer a visceral commentary on how deeply technology has merged with human biology—ultimately giving shape to what he terms “digital DNA.” Added by Archana Khare-Ghose, curator
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In the post-exhibition phase, the discourse generated by Decoding Digital DNA continues through editorial interest, proposed interviews, and critical reflections. These conversations aim to further unpack the ideas that emerged from the exhibition, Sharma’s sustained engagement with technological detritus, and the role contemporary art can play in decoding the afterlife of gadgets in an increasingly data-driven world. 

​LTR: Alison Barrett MBE, Country Director, British Council in India, with artist Mukesh Sharma; Installation view of the exhibition; Raaga, 2025 polyester resin, fibreglass, repurposed laptop keys and paint, 66 × 19 × 48 in. Dhara, 2025 polyester resin, fibreglass, repurposed laptop keys and paint, 44 × 23 × 48 in.
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Mukesh Sharma (above) is a prominent New Delhi - based contemporary visual artist with nearly three decades of practice. Born in Doroli, a village nestled in the lap of the Aravallis in the Alwar district of northwestern Rajasthan, India. 
He holds a BFA from the Rajasthan School of Art, Jaipur, and an MFA from the Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University, Baroda. His work has been presented across several solo exhibitions and prestigious group showcases, both in India and internationally.
Sharma’s practice reflects deeply on urban transformation, digital influence, and the tension between small-town rootedness and metropolitan realities. His multidisciplinary body of work spans large-scale site-responsive installations, mixed-media paintings, hybrid prints and immersive spatial constructions. Well-known works include Nagraj (Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014) and PK - Man and Superman (India Art Fair, 2015), both of which stand as markers of his evolving engagement with technology, identity and the future of human - machine interaction.
His works are held in public and private collections worldwide, including the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP), The National Gallery of Australia, RMIT University, Swiss Re, and Qualcomm. Mukesh has been featured in leading international and national publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The Economic Times, India Today, The Times of India, Hindustan Times, The Hindu, Art India Magazine, and Visionnaire Moralmoda Magazine, among others.

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