The World in a Single Nest: Following the Way of Tagore

The legacy of the great twentieth-century Indian poet, artist, and thinker in dialogue with works by contemporary artists.

The exhibition offers a new perspective on the legacy of Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), an outstanding figure in world culture and the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Rabindranath Tagore. Untitled (“Woodland”), 1935

The project is centred on Tagore’s ideas about holistic education and collective creativity, openness to the traditions of East and West alike, and the unity of nature and man, craft and art. These ideas were most fully realised at Visva-Bharati University, which Tagore founded in 1921 in West Bengal as an alternative to British colonial schools. Many prominent Indian artists and visionaries who would shape the country’s future worked here at Tagore’s invitation. The University’s teaching model and the layout of its campus, devised by the founder himself, largely determined the concept and architecture of the exhibition at GES-2. The title “The World in a Single Nest” refers to the informal motto of Visva-Bharati, borrowed from ancient Vedic texts.

The exhibition features paintings by Rabindranath Tagore himself, archival materials dedicated to an exhibition of his work in Moscow in 1930, when Tagore visited the Soviet capital in person, as well as works by contemporary Indian and Russian artists, including recent graduates of Visva-Bharati University, who re-examine Tagore’s legacy and show the relevance of his ideas today.

Authors

Rabindranath Tagore — Abhishek Chakraborty — Ruma Choudhury — Samit Das — GABAA — Sanchayan Ghosh — Sangita Maity — Liza Neklessa — Ivan Novikov — The Otolith Group — Ulyana Podkorytova — Raqs Media Collective — Prasanta Sahu

Archival research on the 1930 Tagore exhibition in Moscow
Alexey Petukhov

Curators
Artem Timonov, Elena Yaichnikova 

Producers
Maria Kalinina, Alisa Kekelidze, Ksenia Makshantseva, Angelina Vorona

Architecture
sashakim.studio: Sasha Kim, Ira Ten

Art logistics and registration
Daria Krivtsova, Daria Maksimova, Daria Pankevich

Lighting
Ksenia Kosaya

Technical team
Andrey Belov, Olga Dudina, Artem Kanifatov, Nikita Tolkachev

Accessibility and inclusion programmes team
Aleksandra Kharchenko, Vlad Kolesnikov, Victoria Kuzmina, Varya Merenkova, Vera Zamyslova

Graphic design
Maria Kosareva, Olesya Voronina

Editors
Grigory Cheredov, Daniil Dugaev, Olga Grinkrug, Olga Stebleva

English texts
Ben Hooson

Media specialist
Katya Kiseleva

The exhibition is organised in collaboration with
Rabindra Bhavana Museum at Visva-Bharati University

and
Birla Academy of Art and Culture
Emami Art Gallery
Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts
Shrine Empire Gallery

In cooperation with
Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation
Ministry of Culture of India
National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi
Embassy of India in the Russian Federation
Embassy of the Russian Federation in India

Design development
SLOVO

Special thanks 
to Tatyana Dubyanskaya for her expert consultations

Exhibition partner