Looking east | Bengal Biennale 2026

The Bengal Biennale returns for its second edition, bringing together artists and collectives across Kolkata and Santiniketan. Organised by the Gameplan Foundation, it explores ecology, memory, buried histories and collective survival.

Titled ‘Banalata’, this year’s edition takes inspiration from poet Jibanananda Das’s 1942 poem Banalata Sen and the imagery of wild forest vines.The biennale is co-curated by Chander Haat, an artist collective and community space and independent curator Ritika Biswas. Biswas explains that the theme emerged from conversations with the collective around Bengal’s human and non-human ecologies and darkness and melancholy in Das’s poetry. “‘Banalata’ eventually became a set of eco-political propositions for how we might survive, resist and rest in an inherently stratified society,” she says. The imagery of entangled vines provides a framework for exploring underground networks of resistance and solidarity. Artists have interpreted the theme through subjects ranging from carceral histories and Dalit resistance to forgotten geological eras.

The biennale unfolds across venues like the Indian Museum, Victoria Memorial Hall and Alipore Museum in Kolkata, alongside Kala Bhavan, Arthshila and Sculpture Park in Santiniketan. Participating artists include Atul Dodiya, Jitish Kallat, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Ayoung Kim and Tejal Shah. The programme also includes past masters like Rabindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose and Benode Behari Mukherjee.

—The biennale runs from November 26 to January 2, 2027