After a seven-year hiatus, India is returning to the 2026 Venice Biennale with its own pavilion, and much has changed since its last iteration in 2019. The return comes at a moment of consolidation and continued expansion for the country’s vibrant contemporary art scene, now distributed across multiple centers and increasingly sustained by strong internal demand from multigenerational patrons, established and emerging institutions and a new wave of collectors entering the field—as evidenced by both the level of affluence and the intensity of buying activity at the most recent India Art Fair.
Curating it will be Dr. Amin Jaffer, who is also the director of the Qatar royal collection, the Al Thani Collection. Shortly after the announcement, Observer caught up with Jaffer in Doha to learn more about the pavilion and how it will bring to the global stage the unique energies emerging from the dynamic Indian art scene today.
“We’re in a very exciting moment when it comes to art and the broader art scene. There is a strengthening audience in India that is both collecting and appreciating art. We see genuine public interest in large-scale initiatives like the Kochi Biennale and the Jaipur and Jodhpur Art Weeks, as well as in new institutional projects such as the recently opened Bihar Museum,” Jaffer notes. “At the same time, the government is developing major initiatives like Yuge Yugeen Bharat, the Museum of Indian Civilization in Delhi. Alongside that, established institutions such as the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya continue to expand their exhibition programs and engage growing audiences. These are formal museums with permanent collections and curatorial direction, and they are being visited and appreciated more than ever.”
The pavilion will be presented by India’s Ministry of Culture in partnership with the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre and Serendipity Arts Foundation, two of India’s leading multidisciplinary cultural institutions. Titled “Geographies of Distance: remembering home,” the exhibition aims to reflect today’s India in its cultural depth between tradition and future, from its economic boom to enduring craft traditions and the diverse voices within the country and its vast global diaspora. At the center is the notion of home, explored through the practices of five artists—Alwar Balasubramaniam (Bala), Sumakshi Singh, Ranjani Shettar, Asim Waqif and Skarma Sonam Tashi—who draw on material traditions spanning millennia to evoke emotional and cultural connections.
The curatorial theme draws directly from the Biennale’s overarching one, “In Minor Keys,” which Jaffer interprets as referring to the minor notes on a piano keyboard—the softer ones, the elegiac ones, the introspective keys. “When I began thinking about the project, I was drawn to these softer emotions: tender emotions, introspective emotions. That led me to the theme of home and to the question of longing for home, or yearning for home,” he shares, adding that this feels particularly relevant in a country like India, which has a centuries-old cultural tradition and strong identity but is today in a state of accelerated transformation. Economic growth, demographic expansion and technological change are dramatically reshaping India’s towns and cities, which are constantly being renewed and transformed. “Across India, entirely new cities, new neighborhoods and expanding secondary and tertiary cities are emerging. Places I remember from 10 or 15 years ago are now completely transformed. I wanted to focus on this act of remembering—remembering home, remembering the past, remembering where we come from.” From this emerges the anchoring concept of home as a physical space—one that evolves and transforms—but that remains omnipresent.
This is important not only because of spatial transformation within India but also because Indians have long moved extensively, both within the country and globally. “The pavilion addresses the question and tension of where one comes from that is constantly present. If an Indian moves to America and settles there, at what point does India cease to be home, and when does America become home? For the second generation, for their children, is India home, or is America home?” Jaffer says. These are questions he himself grew up with as part of the Indian diaspora. “There was always a longing for India, a remembering of India. That feeling persists because there remains a strong link through language, music, culture, food, cinema and shared values.” Then, whether India remains one’s physical home is another question. “The pavilion explores whether home is a physical space or a portable condition—something carried through emotion, memory, ritual and personal history. There is no single answer. It is a question visitors must ask themselves as they move through the pavilion.”
He hopes the pavilion will resonate with Indian audiences as much as with the diaspora and, more broadly, with the condition of displacement that defines today’s global society and those living across geographies. Indian contemporary art is deeply globalized today, just as India itself is. Yet when it came to how India should be represented, Jaffer felt strongly that, given the theme “In Minor Keys,” the pavilion should focus on what he calls “minor materials”—artisanal crafts and techniques that have accompanied the country’s civilization and cultural history since its earliest days. “I wanted to return to materials rooted in Indian civilization. We are using thread, terracotta and reclaimed debris and found materials. These are materials that have existed in India for thousands of years,” he explains.
For example, Alwar Balasubramaniam (Bala) will present a fractured earth made of terracotta—the earliest sculptural medium in Indian history. Working from a studio in rural Tamil Nadu, his practice emerges from an intimate and primordial dialogue with landscape and material. New Delhi-based artist Sumakshi Singh has recreated her family home entirely in embroidered thread, transforming memory into an architectural medium. It was the repository of her childhood memories, and before it was demolished she carefully measured it so she could reconstruct it. Thread is significant not only because of domestic traditions such as stitching and embroidery but also because textiles have been foundational to Indian civilization and its economy for centuries.
Similarly, Ranjani Shettar creates suspended organic floral forms using traditional handcraft techniques from Karnataka, while Asim Waqif works with bamboo—a material deeply embedded in Indian culture and widely used in architecture and construction—to address issues of consumption and sustainability in public space. Skarma Sonam Tashi presents work grounded in the landscape and architecture of his native Ladakh, using organic recycled materials and traditional techniques such as papier-mâché to explore ecological fragility and cultural preservation.
“These are materials that belong to our civilizational history. The artists are using them in contemporary ways, expressing contemporary ideas through materials rooted in ancient practice,” Jaffer notes. In this way, the pavilion brings together both India’s rootedness in tradition and its contemporary innovation. “It is a contemporary art biennale, so the works must speak in today’s voice. They must reflect contemporary artistic practice in India today. But their material language remains deeply connected to India’s civilizational past.”
Although the five artists come from different generations and regions, they share a common emotional and conceptual foundation that transforms the pavilion into a harmonious and evocative orchestration. “The theme of home, and this attachment to materials rooted in memory and tradition, connects them,” Jaffer says. “That is what unites them within a single pavilion. So although there are five distinct artistic voices, they are ultimately expressing a shared condition. They are, in a sense, singing in harmony. They have different voices, but they are singing to the same tune.” Yet the intentionally open-ended narrative of the pavilion aims to resonate beyond cultural specificity. “Home is not always a happy place, or an unhappy place, but remembering it is always deeply charged. It carries emotional density.”
The subject of home itself was also chosen because it is not only relevant to India—it is relevant globally. “All of us move more than ever before, whether for education, work or personal reasons. We are all, in different ways, dislocated. I wanted visitors to understand the Indian condition, especially that of the Indian diaspora,” Jaffer explains. “Indians represent nearly 18 percent of the world’s population. This pavilion speaks to a vast number of people—but ultimately, it addresses a universal human condition.”
Distance, too, becomes both a physical and emotional condition. “There is therefore a great deal of metaphor in both the language and the project itself. Visitors are invited to internalize their experience,” he says. “The goal is to create resonance. Each visitor will bring their own memories, their own emotional history and their own sense of distance. What they take away will be entirely personal.”