The State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, is hosting 'Sediments of Becoming: Fossilised Present, Summoned Pasts,' the first dedicated contemporary Indian art exhibition in its 260-year history. Co-curated by Marina Schulz and New Delhi-based gallerist Tunty Chauhan, and produced with Threshold Art Gallery, the show features eleven Indian artists—including Afrah Shafiq, Manjunath Kamath, Ravinder Reddy, and Sumakshi Singh—with works spanning painting, sculpture, installation, and performance, many created specifically for the exhibition.
This exhibition matters because it marks a historic institutional shift: the Hermitage, a repository of over three million objects founded by Catherine the Great, has never before devoted a dedicated space to contemporary Indian art. By positioning Indian artistic voices within one of the world's most authoritative cultural institutions, the show challenges the traditional museum narrative that has long presented India only as an object of study rather than as a living, speaking presence. The curatorial framework treats artistic practice as cultural archaeology, asking each artist to excavate buried strata of memory, making the exhibition a significant statement about how global art histories are written and whose voices are included.