208 Grass Babies Transform Japan's Venice Pavilion
At the Venice Biennale, 208 baby dolls invite visitors to slow down and participate in a playful ritual of shared care.
By Art Vault
September 29, 2026 · 2 min read
Photo by Uli Holz, courtesy of The Japan Foundation.
At the Japan Pavilion for the 61st Venice Biennale, 208 baby dolls in colorful clothes and sunglasses turn spectatorship into an exercise in care. Ei Arakawa-Nash’s participatory installation Grass Babies, Moon Babies spreads through the building’s interior, open pilotis, and surrounding garden.
Visitors are invited to choose a doll and carry it through the pavilion. The simple action changes the pace and posture of the exhibition: people navigate around one another while holding, adjusting, and attending to figures that are presented as participants rather than objects kept at a distance.
Care as a Collective Ritual
The route culminates at a changing station. Inside each doll’s diaper is a QR code that generates a short “diaper poem” connected to its assigned birthday. The dates join episodes from Arakawa-Nash’s personal experience with longer historical and social timelines in Japan and beyond.
Co-curated by Horikawa Lisa and Takahashi Mizuki, the installation uses repetition and gentle absurdity to make caregiving visible as shared labor. Music and recorded baby sounds drift through the space while the dolls circulate between strangers, accumulating gestures of affection, uncertainty, responsibility, and play.
Grass Babies, Moon Babies remains on view through November 22, 2026. Exhibition details are available from the Japan Pavilion. Follow Arakawa-Nash on Instagram.
Individual image credits appear beneath each photograph. Source: Trendland; additional exhibition details from the Japan Pavilion.
