From Mumbai to London Co-constituting value in art from India via local and global circuits of valuation

This chapter develops a notion of circuits of valuation, through which artists and artworks from India are validated within the local and national contexts. Circuits of valuation denotes the global circuits, comprised of patterned, repeated routes, with particular stops along them, via which artists and artworks from India circulate. Furthermore, it indexes how, in circulating along specific global circuits, artists and artworks are validated and acquire value. This chapter examines how artists, art dealers, collectors, and other art world actors construct, imagine, and rely upon these circuits to validate artists and artworks from India that often circulate back to the national context, as artists return home and artworks are acquired by local galleries and collectors. These global circuits of valuation traverse nodes that may be art institutions, sites of commercial transactions, or textual platforms. Thus Indian art acquires value in local (or national) contexts in part by moving through these global circuits that valuate this art. In drawing attention to how global mobility and encounters of artworks and artists across borders and sites create meaning and value in particular places, this chapter illuminates some of the dynamics of how art from southern contexts acquires value within a globalized art system.