Geographies of Distance: Remembering Home Curated by Dr. Amin Jaffer
At Indian Pavilion - Venice Biennale
Arsenale, 09.05 - 22.11.2026
This installation recreates in thread the demolished family home at 33 Link Road, New Delhi, where the artist spent formative moments of her childhood. The lace-like structures render walls, hinges, and brickwork as translucent, spectral outlines, revealing how architecture has been recreated as an act of labor and memory. Rooted in the tradition of women in the family gathering to embroider together, the work reclaims domestic labor as foundational rather than decorative. What was once solid shelter becomes a weightless apparition, inviting visitors to reflect on loss, and to question what home means when its physical form has vanished entirely.
Note from the Artist
“I am creating an immersive installation in which visitors will move through a labyrinth of life-sized, broken architectural fragments of a home. Crafted from delicate white thread—thinner than hair—these gossamer architectural membranes are suspended in air, reminiscent of memories drawn from the ether. Though I have lived across states and countries, my idea of home remained tethered to 33 Link Road
—a house built by my refugee grandparents in Delhi. Listed as our permanent address on official documents, it was a site of annual gatherings, stories, weddings, and sleepovers; a room at the back where my mother was born, and a room at the front where my grandfather died. 33 Link Road was considered ‘home’ not only by family, but by friends and the wider community—many of whom never officially lived there. This potent container of shared histories now stands demolished—its once-solid, sheltering surfaces dissolved into immaterial remembrance. As an homage to the afternoons spent in this home, knitting and embroidering with my grandmother, I recreated the architectural details of the house using thread.”
