India makes a significant return to the world’s most prestigious contemporary art platform, marking the country’s first participation at La Biennale di Venezia in seven years. The Pavilion of India announces Geographies of Distance: Remembering Home, a seminal exhibition revealing the cultural depth of a nation in the throes of economic boom with a vibrant global diaspora.
Presented by the Ministry of Culture, Government of India – and curated by Dr. Amin Jaffer – the India Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia reflects the cultural depth, creative vitality and evolving identity of contemporary India.
Featuring works by five leading Indian artists – Alwar Balasubramaniam (Bala), Sumakshi Singh, Ranjani Shettar, Asim Waqif and Skarma Sonam Tashi – the exhibition explores the idea of ‘home’ as memory, material and emotion in a rapidly changing nation shaped by urban growth, mobility and a vibrant global diaspora.
The Pavilion of India announces details of its participation in the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, featuring the group exhibition, Geographies of Distance: remembering home. The India Pavilion returns to Venice for the first time since 2019, in partnership with the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC) and Serendipity Arts Foundation, two of India’s leading multi-disciplinary cultural institutions.
India’s return to La Biennale di Venezia is a proud moment of reflection and a statement of cultural confidence.Our national pavilion will showcase a contemporary India that is deeply rooted in its civilisational memory while fully engaged with the world today. Through this pavilion, India affirms the strength of our cultural diversity, the vitality of our creative communities, and the role of art and culture in contributing to how our nation is seen and understood on the global stage.”
Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Union Minister of Culture and Tourism of India
All five participating Indian artists – Alwar Balasubramaniam (Bala), Sumakshi Singh, Ranjani Shettar, Asim Waqif and Skarma Sonam Tashi – draw on the material culture traditions that span millennia to evoke an emotional connection to the idea of home. Despite the artists’ different geographic origins, experience and practice, all are united in their use of organic materials traditional to India in the creation and presentation of their work.
Geographies of Distance: Remembering Home will express how, for those whose lives are shaped by change or distance, home becomes less a fixed place and more a portable condition: part memory, part material, part ritual, part personal mythology. The exhibition reflects a moment of accelerated change in India, as cities grow horizontally and vertically, transforming neighbourhoods at an unprecedented pace. Indians today are more mobile than ever, both within a country in the throes of economic boom and as a visible and vocal global diaspora. Constituting nearly 20 per cent of the world’s population, Indians remain deeply connected to their origins and culture. As once familiar physical spaces transform and renew, we are invited to consider whether home is a place or an evocation of emotion and memory.
Across the exhibition, elements of ‘home’ appear fractured, suspended, scaffolded, or vulnerable as the artists explore longing and a deep-rooted sense of attachment to the place to which we belong. Each artist considers India’s transformation, mobility and the global diaspora.
The Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre is pleased to partner with the Ministry of Culture to present the National Pavilion of India at La Biennale di Venezia, featuring some of our most compelling artistic voices. The richness and plurality of their work reflect the complexities and creative ambition of contemporary India, while celebrating the timeless traditions of our country. This project underscores our vision for art and culture to foster a global dialogue that transcends boundaries, bringing the best of India and the world together.”
Isha Ambani, Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre
The exhibiting artists represent many regions and generations of artists at the forefront of artistic practice in India:
Alwar Balasubramaniam (Bala) works from a studio in rural Tamil Nadu, with a practice that emerges from an intimate dialogue with the natural world and the landscape surrounding his home, crafted from the soil and clay from the terrain in which he lives.
Sumakshi Singh is a New Delhi-based artist who creates ethereal installations from embroidered thread, which turn memory itself into an architectural medium.
Ranjani Shettar explores India’s ancient craft traditions through sculptural works that appear to defy gravity. Working in Karnataka, she translates natural materials into organic floral forms entirely by hand, demonstrating the slow revelation of a finished work and its hidden possibilities.
Asim Waqif, trained as an architect, repurposes organic and discarded materials for his sculptural installations, confronting issues of consumption and sustainability in public space. His work invites visitors to participate and activate his structures beyond observance.
Skarma Sonam Tashi presents work grounded in the landscape and architecture of his native Ladakh, working with organic recycled materials and traditional techniques such as paper mâché to showcase the fragility of the natural world, raising questions about ecology and cultural preservation.
The India Pavilion brings together artists whose practices reflect the evolving realities of contemporary India. Working across regions and material traditions, these artists articulate India’s global voice through deeply personal and innovative forms of expression. Their work demonstrates how India’s creative talent continues to engage meaningfully with questions of memory, place and transformation in a changing world.”
Vivek Aggarwal, Secretary, Ministry of Culture
India seeps into Venice not as a spectacle, but as a whisper with confidence. Through music, movement and murmurs, the India Pavilion creates ephemeral interventions that dissolve into the city’s daily rhythm – appearing at dawn on a bridge, resonating at dusk, materialising during afternoon light. A key highlight of the India Pavilion will be a curated programme of music, performance, poetry and conversation over the course of the Biennale.
The exhibition is curated by Dr. Amin Jaffer, who has devised the project in response to La Biennale di Venezia’s theme, In Minor Keys, conceived by the late curator Koyo Kouoh.
The Pavilion of India at la Biennale di Venezia will take place at the Arsenale from 9th May to 22nd November, 2026. Find more information about la Biennale di Venezia here.
