On Saturday 28 February 2026, Tate Britain held a night of three concurrent durational performances for Land, Material, Memory curated by Joseph Morgan Schofield, coinciding with the Turner and Constable exhibition. Devika Bilimoria was one of the three artists who presented new live works, with Ash McNaughton and n:u (melissandre varin).
Bilimoria’s work, Pind (2026), takes its name from piṇḍa, in Sanskrit meaning body, lump or mass, that also references ground rice balls offered as sustenance for the deceased from Hindu death rites. Activated through pressing, accumulation, and dispersion, the work is created in the wake of the artist’s mother’s death.
Attending to the erosion of ritual practices that occur from political forces, the work places piṇḍa throughout Tate Britain’s corners and nooks as markers of nourishment to the terrains of loss and disruption. The artist attaches the piṇḍa on their body to become a site of nourishment for their mother in death, as their mother was for them at birth.
Materials that Pind recast in Tate Britain were nine kilograms of artist-made kumkum (red dyed turmeric) laced with dried menstrual blood, piṇḍa (ground rice, sesame, ghee, honey, sugar, rose oil, water), water from the river Thames, ghee, and a brass hand-bell affixed to a facemask.
Pind took place in three acts. ‘Protract’ began by witnessing the artist make an unbroken 19 metre line of kumkum in the centre of Gallery 9. In ‘Accrete’, the artist unexpectedly exited the main space, with audiences following them to the rotunda staircase where they collected and inserted piṇḍa into their costume like a trickster. Finally, ‘Entropic Return' saw the artist ceremoniously confront the kumkum line, slowly rolling over the kumkum in an intimate encounter of dissolution.
Bilimoria was raised in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia and is currently based in London. Their practice spans performance, dance, video, photography, drawing and installation. Central to their practice is a concept of ‘body-ing’, where bodies reciprocate in perpetual negotiation with forces.
Since the age of five, Bilimoria has trained in Bharatanatyam at the Chandrabhanu Bharatalaya Academy of Indian Dance in Melbourne. In 2022, the artist earned their Honours in Fine Arts (First Class) at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne University, and was a recipient of the Rodger Davies Award for their durational performance installation, Offerings. In 2025, Offerings was selected and presented for the ‘London Open Live’ program at the Whitechapel Gallery.
Pind has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.
