Drawing on monsoon’s deep cultural symbolism in South Asia, TRI Art & Culture’s Monsoon Rooms presents two sensorial exhibitions that probe remembrance and rest. Through scent, sound, light, and intimate ephemera, contemporary artists Vriddhi Sawlani and Hansika Mangwani reframe restoration as an active engagement with memory and stillness rather than a simple escape from the past.
Monsoon in South Asia is deeply embedded in the region’s cultural imagination: rain has long been associated with longing, reunion, renewal, and melancholy. From the poetry of Kalidasa’s Meghaduta to monsoon ragas, miniature paintings, and contemporary cinema, the rains have given us a language to articulate our inner landscapes. A respite after long, arid summers, the rains restore not only the physical world but also our relationship to time, memory, and place.
The second edition of TRI Art & Culture Monsoon Rooms in Kolkata brings together two immersive installations that explore remembrance and rest as distinct forms of emotional restoration. On view from August 21 to November 2, 2026, the exhibition transforms TRI’s galleries into sensorial environments that invite visitors to slow down and turn inward.
On the ground floor, The Presence of an Absence by Vriddhi Swalani (@cigarettegreys) approaches memory as something fluid. Through scent, installation, staged photographs, and handwritten letters, the body of work considers how absence continues to occupy physical and emotional space. Instead of treating remembrance as a passive act of looking backwards, Sawlani explores how memories can be reconstructed, revisited and reconciled through sensory experience. The use of scent and personal ephemera evokes the involuntary nature of remembering—the sudden return of a person, place or feeling through something as seemingly ordinary as a smell or a fragment of handwriting.
On the first floor gallery, Breath Work(s) by Hansika Mangwani (@hansika_mangwani) offers a contrasting proposition. Conceived as an immersive resting room, the space combines soft-scaping, gentle frequencies, and light installations to create an environment oriented towards pause. The installation treats rest itself as an act of attention.
Together, the two rooms map different emotional states: one asks us to sit with what is gone, while the other invites us to inhabit the present. In its second edition, TRI Art & Culture’s Monsoon Rooms suggests that restoration need not mean forgetting. Sometimes, it begins by making space for memory and stillness.
The second edition of TRI Art & Culture’s Monsoon Rooms is on view from 21 August till 2 November, 2026. Follow @triartandculture on Instagram to learn more.
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