Japan’s pavilion turns caring into a collective game
At Venice Art Biennale 2026Ei Arakawa-Nash transforms the Japan Pavilion into an environment shaped through touch, movement and shared responsibility. Entitled 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 pavilion interiors, temporarily taking on the role of caretaker.
The gesture is simple from the start. Each visitor chooses a doll and holds it close as they move through the booth. However, the experience quickly accumulates emotional and symbolic weight. Babies are not presented as props or sculptures to be observed from a distance. They circulate in the exhibition in people’s arms, on their shoulders, in moments of hesitation, affection, awkwardness and concentration. Throughout the day, the stand is filled with them small acts of care as strangers become aware of each other’s movements and responsibilities.
all images by Uli Holz unless otherwise noted
diaper poems and collective rituals in grass babies, moon babies
Installed in the modernist structure of the Japan Pavilion in the Giardini, the exhibition extends beyond the gallery walls and into the surrounding landscape. Open pilots and pathways become part of the rhythm of the work, allowing doll-carrying visitors to drift in and out of view. Japanese American artist Arakawa-Nash uses this traffic to slow down the pace of the viewer.
The exhibit culminates in a communal station where visitors change the dolls’ diapers and scan the QR codes attached to each baby. These create short ‘diaper poems’ linked to designated birthdays, connecting familiar caregiving rituals to wider historical timelines. Birthdays correspond to intersections between personal experiences and larger social and political forces, placing babies somewhere between fictional characters, future descendants, and historical witnesses. The paper suggests that care is never isolated from the circumstances that surround it, be they familial, institutional, ecological or national.
Grass Babies, Moon Babies is Ei Arakawa-Nash’s exhibition for the Japan Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Art Biennale
it embraces repetition, proximity and collective intimacy
For Arakawa-Nash, whose practice has long explored collective performance and unstable forms of writing, the exhibition marks a turn toward questions shaped by parenthood and queer kinship. Since the early 2000s, the artist has developed collective performances that challenge fixed identities and individual control, often drawing from the legacies of Gutai, Fluxus, Happenings and Judson Dance Theatre. Here, these stories are filtered through the repeated gestures of care: carrying, cleaning, comforting, waiting.
Grass Babies, Moon Babies works through accumulation and atmosphere. Laughter, uncertainty, tenderness and discomfort coexist throughout the booth. Some visitors hold the dolls instinctively, while others are unsure how to hold them. Children move around the facility 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. As part of this year’s Biennale, the exhibition introduces a quieter spatial language based on preservation, repetition and physical proximity. Its emotional register emerges gradually, through participation and duration.
Daily audience activations continue throughout the Biennale alongside a series of live performances featuring Arakawa-Nash and collaborators. After 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 the 208 baby dolls
a participatory installation that takes place in the pilotis, the garden and the interiors of the pavilion
the experience accumulates emotional and symbolic weight | image Luca Zambelli Bais
the work suggests that care is never isolated from the circumstances surrounding it | image Luca Zambelli Bais
exhibition marks a turn to questions shaped by parenthood and queer kinship | image © designboom
stories are filtered through repeated gestures of care | image Luca Zambelli Bais
