What to expect at the country's biggest art event, India Art Fair 2020

In a depressed market, the Indian art world's big annual event will play safe instead of cutting-edge, pretty rather than zany

Ai Weiwei’s ode to climate change, an iron sculpture based on deceased tree roots from Brazil, might be the gawking point that Damien Hirst’s dots or Marc Quinn’s bloodied fibre-glass head were in previous editions, but India Art Fair 2020 is going to be less about shock-and-awe than about sales. Provocative works might capture eyeballs, but converting footfalls into rupees is the big challenge when the economy is sliding, and India is looking less like the powerhouse it was touted to be. Safe is being preferred over shocking, even as the annual jamboree of the art world, all bells and