Applications close 15th May 2026

National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai

Theme: At Play

What forces are at play, shaping and defining the world we experience? What impulses do we contain that form or override these forces?

Play is integral to the human experience and fundamental to the creative process. There is a tension inherent in play that is exhilarating yet risky, competitive yet collaborative. Through play we can put down the weight of a loaded past, imagine radical futures, and yet remain truly present. Play provides not only refuge, but resistance.

Play allows us a sense of joy, moving lightly between structure and chaos without fear of failure. It exists at the threshold of uncertainty - where systems can be questioned, patterns broken, conventions overturned. Play offers us the freedom to pivot, adapt and shape-shift, opening up space for thinking otherwise—about material, making, and consequently about the world we are part of.

In this third edition of the Indian Ceramics Triennale, the exhibition is seen as an incubator of possibilities. Artists are invited to hold this undefined and unknown moment filled with potential, to dare to play through inventiveness, provocation, humour, satire, meaning, absurdity, performance and color. To use play as an institution of and for disruption, dreaming into existence the unexpected and unacknowledged. To question, through play, the forces at play.

Two Zoom information sessions will be organised on APRIL 2 AND APRIL 11 AT 6 PM IST to guide applicants through the process. Follow the link.

Read more about the event and apply to their open call for artists here.

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