Delhi as its canvas: India Biennale to spread out across capital from December 4 onwards

After a successful exhibition at the Venice Biennale, the ministry of culture plans to showcase the works of the five artists it displayed there.

After a successful exhibition at the Venice Biennale, the ministry of culture plans to showcase the works of the five artists it displayed there at the India Biennale slated to begin in Delhi on December 4 and go on well into March next year.

The ministry of culture’s own exhibition is expected to come up at the 16th-century Purana Qila, which will serve as the hub or focal point of the Biennale. (Reuters/ Representational)

The art, architecture and design festival will take place across the city, including in the lawns of the Lodhi Gardens, the Qutub Minar complex, the Agrasen ki Baoli, the Red Fort and the Safdarjung Tomb, as well as other galleries, embassy precincts and private cultural venues.

The ministry’s own exhibition is expected to come up at the 16th-century Purana Qila, which will serve as the hub or focal point of the Biennale.

State and UTs' representation

Participants include architecture and design firms as well as public and private art and cultural institutions such as the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre, the JSW Foundation, and DAG (formerly Delhi Art Gallery).

“We should make our monuments into live cultural spaces and open them up so that [visitors] can not only enjoy history but also get a glimpse of the contemporary art scene of India,” Vivek Aggarwal, secretary, ministry of culture said. “The whole of Delhi will be a stage.”

“We are looking at state pavilions and representation from states and Union Territories, and we will also have international exhibitors,” he added.

The government will provide the “core and shell”, an official stated, referring to the infrastructure, electricity, and other requirements of exhibitors at site. However, each participant is expected to bear the costs of exhibiting at the Biennale.

The 108-day event (the Biennale ends on March 21, 2027) will also have a students’ biennale, populated by works of students from participating colleges and institutions, as well as talks, workshops and daily performance art programming. “We will also organise conversations on various aspects of art and artists, the use of Artificial Intelligence, and the impact of emerging technology on various aspects of art,” Aggarwal said.

‘Bringing India to the world’

A curatorium comprising a team culled from different public and private institutions, including the director general of NGMA, Dr Sanjeev Kishor Gautam, and the director of Apparao Galleries, Sharan Apparao, has been appointed.

The theme of the edition is Tat Twam Asi — Sanskrit for “You Are That” — and exhibitors have been asked to respond to the theme using the lens of the five senses.

“The idea is that if we can go internationally and participate, why can’t we curate an event in India where Indian art is centrestage? We have to bring the world to India as well. So the idea is that we scale up the initiative to such a level where India becomes a host,” Aggarwal said.

The idea of such a biennale arose after Aggarwal and his team of officials helped set up the India Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (Venice Biennale) in partnership with Serendipity Arts and NMACC, in May.

Curated by Amin Jaffer, the pavilion in Venice features the works of five artists — Alwar Balasubramaniam, Ranjani Shettar, Sumakshi Singh, Skarma Sonam Tashi and Asim Waqif — which is unusual for a national pavilion that typically features only one or two artists. The five Indian artists, who hail from different parts of the country, worked across a range of materials to create large-scale installations based on Jaffer’s curatorial prompt, “geographies of distance: remembering home.”

“We will erect the same exhibition at NGMA, so that people in India can see what we had depicted in Venice,” Aggarwal said. The inaugural edition of the India Biennale was held in 2023, albeit at a smaller scale. The India Art, Architecture and Design Biennale was held at the Red Fort, and comprised seven themed pavilions. A parallel students’ biennale was also held at the Lalit Kala Akademi.