baby dolls animate japan pavilion in ei arakawa-nash's ode to care

japan pavilion turns caregiving into collective play

At the Venice Art Biennale 2026, Ei Arakawa-Nash transforms the Japan Pavilion into an environment shaped through touch, movement, and shared responsibility. Titled Grass Babies, Moon Babies, the exhibition takes the form of a participatory installation in which visitors are invited to carry one of 208 baby dolls through the pilotis, garden, and interior spaces of the pavilion, temporarily assuming the role of caretaker.

The gesture is simple from the outset. Each visitor selects a doll and holds it close while moving through the pavilion. Yet the experience quickly accumulates emotional and symbolic weight. The babies are not presented as props or sculptures to observe from a distance. They circulate through the exhibition in people’s arms, against their shoulders, in moments of hesitation, affection, awkwardness, and concentration. Throughout the day, the pavilion fills with these small acts of attention as strangers become visibly conscious of one another’s movements and responsibilities.

all images by Uli Holz, unless stated otherwise

diaper poems and collective rituals at grass babies, moon babies

Installed within the modernist structure of the Japan Pavilion in the Giardini, the exhibition extends beyond the gallery walls and into the surrounding landscape. The open pilotis and pathways become part of the work’s rhythm, allowing visitors carrying the dolls to drift in and out of view. Japanese American artist Arakawa-Nash uses this circulation to slow down the pace of spectatorship.

The exhibition culminates in a communal station where visitors change the dolls’ diapers and scan QR codes attached to each baby. These generate short ‘diaper poems’ tied to assigned birthdays, linking intimate rituals of care to broader historical timelines. The birthdays correspond to intersections between personal experiences and larger social and political forces, positioning the babies somewhere between fictional characters, future descendants, and historical witnesses. The work suggests that care is never isolated from the conditions surrounding it, whether familial, institutional, ecological, or national.

Grass Babies, Moon Babies is Ei Arakawa-Nash’s exhibition for the Japan Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale 2026

embracing repetition, proximity, and collective intimacy

For Arakawa-Nash, whose practice has long explored collective performance and unstable forms of authorship, the exhibition marks a shift toward questions shaped by parenthood and queer kinship. Since the early 2000s, the artist has developed collaborative performances that challenge fixed identities and individual control, often drawing from the legacies of Gutai, Fluxus, Happenings, and Judson Dance Theater. Here, those histories are filtered through the repetitive gestures of caregiving: carrying, cleaning, comforting, waiting.

Grass Babies, Moon Babies operates through accumulation and atmosphere. Laughter, uncertainty, tenderness, and discomfort coexist throughout the pavilion. Some visitors cradle the dolls instinctively, while others appear unsure how to hold them. Children move through the installation differently than adults. Groups pause to compare birthdays and poems. These unscripted interactions become part of the exhibition itself.

Co-curated by Horikawa Lisa and Takahashi Mizuki, the pavilion approaches care as a structure of interdependence. Within the context of this year’s Biennale, the exhibition introduces a quieter spatial language grounded in maintenance, repetition, and bodily proximity. Its emotional register emerges gradually, through participation and duration.

Daily audience activations continue throughout the Biennale’s run, alongside a series of live performances involving Arakawa-Nash and collaborators. Following Venice, Grass Babies, Moon Babies will travel to Hannover’s Kestner Gesellschaft before concluding with a presentation at Tokyo’s Artizon Museum in 2027.

visitors are invited to carry one of 208 baby dolls