india pavilion explores memories of home through thread, bamboo, and earth in venice

"The National Pavilion of India returns to the Venice Art Biennale in the Arsenale with Geographies of Distance: remembering home, a group exhibition tracing how memory, material, and migration shape the idea of home. Curated by Dr. Amin Jaffer and presented by the Ministry of Culture, Government of India, the pavilion marks India's first national presentation at Biennale Arte since 2019, bringing together five artists whose practices move through soil, thread, bamboo, paper, discarded matter, and architectural memory."

"The exhibition opens inside a raw Venetian interior of exposed timber, brick, and industrial scale, where each work seems to test how fragile structures can hold emotional weight. Across the India Pavilion, home appears as a partial image: a cracked earthen wall, a transparent facade, a suspended botanical form, a bamboo structure gathered from fragments. The rooms carry the feeling of places remembered through touch before they are understood as images."

"The exhibition features Alwar Balasubramaniam, Sumakshi Singh, Ranjani Shettar, Asim Waqif, and Skarma Sonam Tashi, artists working across different regions of India and across distinct material languages. Their practices share an interest in organic and traditional materials, which the National Pavilion of India frames through a larger question during the Venice Art Biennale: what remains of home when physical places change, expand, or disappear."

"That question feels especially present in Sumakshi Singh's translucent architectural installation, where embroidered thread renders fragments of domestic and urban space at full scale. Walls, windows, grilles, and doorways appear in pale lines, suspended in air with the precision of a drawing and the vulnerability of a memory. The work invites movement through its openings, turning architecture into something porous and ghostlike,"

The National Pavilion of India returns to the Venice Art Biennale in the Arsenale with Geographies of Distance: remembering home, a group exhibition tracing how memory, material, and migration shape the idea of home. The pavilion presents India’s first national presentation at Biennale Arte since 2019 and brings together five artists whose practices use soil, thread, bamboo, paper, discarded matter, and architectural memory. The exhibition is installed in a raw Venetian interior of exposed timber and brick, where works test how fragile structures can hold emotional weight. Home appears as partial images such as cracked earthen walls, transparent facades, suspended botanical forms, and bamboo structures made from fragments. The works treat places remembered through touch as images, and ask what remains of home when physical places change or disappear.

Read at designboom | architecture & design magazine