Commissioner: National Gallery of Modern Art, Ministry of Culture;
Curator: Amin Jaffer;
Exhibitors: Alwar Balasubramaniam, Sumakshi Singh, Ranjani Shettar, Asim Waqif, Skarma Sonam Tashi
Venue: Arsenale
India
Geographies of Distance: Remembering Home
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Home is not always the place where we live today. Sometimes it is a place where we once lived, or one reconstructed through memory and feeling. For lives shaped by movement across regions and generations, home becomes less a fixed location than a portable condition: part material, part ritual and part personal mythology. Geographies of Distance: Remembering Home proposes home not as a stable structure but as an idea continually remade in response to change.
The exhibition reflects a moment of transformation in India, where cities expand at an unprecedented speed. Five artists, rooted in India’s material cultures, give form to this condition. Alwar Balasubramaniam’s clay works register the fragility of the land. Sumakshi Singh reconstructs a demolished family house in thread, rendering home as a delicate structure sustained by care. Ranjani Shettar transforms organic materials into a suspended garden, addressing the importance of flora in the Indian psyche. Skarma Sonam Tashi’s papier-mâché dwellings recall Ladakh, where traditional architecture is threatened by development. In contrast, Asim Waqif’s bamboo installation signals the frantic growth of modern cities, which inevitably displaces our collective past.
For curator Amin Jaffer, home is a fragment residing in gesture and memory. The exhibition invites us to reflect on a condition felt across all humanity.