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At Serendipity Arts Festival and Kochi-Muziris Biennale, artist Birender Yadav’s work gives voice to the migrant self

Yadav has built more than a decade of art practice around questions of labour and identity, looking at sites of labourers and brick kiln workers

4 min readDec 17, 2025 07:01 PM IST

Artist Birender Yadav at the Kochi Muziris Biennale (Vandana Kalra)

At the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB), artist Birender Yadav’s installation ‘Only the Earth Knows Their Labour’ at Aspinwall House is reminiscent of a brick kiln, where the workers might be absent but their anonymous labour is highlighted through each element moulded in clay – from familiar tools to folded clothes and a trunk that holds their belonging – these become symbols of the migrant self.

A bended vertebra in clay is suspended from the roof to represent the form it takes after lifting heavy weights for years. “They lead difficult lives and their suffering hardly finds acknowledgement,” says the Delhi-based artist. Yadav is also at the Serendipity Arts Festival (SAF) in Goa, where he is part of “Murmurations”, an exhibition curated by Ravi Agarwal. sharing their stories and predicaments at a panel discussion at SAF, Yadav says, “They keep moving and it’s a new batch of people at the same place every few months.”

Yadav’s work emerges not from second-hand testimonies but his own observation and lived experiences of growing up in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, where his father and uncles worked as blacksmiths and miners. “My father would often draw and that is how I developed an interest in art,” he says. Encouraged by his school teacher in Dhanbad to pursue art, he enrolled at Banaras Hindu University. It is here that he began exploring the lives of brick kiln workers in Mirzapur by making frequent visits to sites. He has been conducting workshops with children for Artreach India. “I would often use clay while working with children and some of the techniques that I use actually came from that experience,” he says.

Birender Yadav’s work at Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa (Anshu Singh)

Now 33, Yadav has built more than a decade of art practice around questions of labour and identity. For instance, when he noticed how brick workers were not able to enrol for Unique Identification Number because they didn’t have an address, he responded with ‘Erased Faces’ (2014), where he asked them to stamp their thumbprints onto passport-sized portraits, creating for them an artistic documentation of sorts.

If ‘Walking on the Roof of Hell’ (2016) featured worn-out khadau (wooden) sandals as a reminder to the physical toll of labour, in another project he documented their working conditions in brick kilns, particularly how it was ironic that bricks named after goddess Durga weighed down on the women who carry them.

More recently, works such as ‘Re-Presented from the Traces’ (2021-22) have focused on objects left behind at kilns, where he has cast them as witnesses of migration and displacement. A 2019 residency in Switzerland also expanded his engagement with clay and casting processes. “I realised that one of India’s first modern brick kilns built in the 17th century near Bengaluru had a Swiss link,” he shares.

In some ways, Yadav’s present work bring together some of his several engagements. The manner in which the tools have been suspended at KMB, for instance, is just how his father hangs them at home. “I have often heard him say that the shape of the tools and the body of the worker changes together as both adapt to one another,” says Yadav.

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While the entryway into his exhibit at Kochi has a cart with discarded bricks without any branding to represent the landless migrant labourers, the same sentiment is represented in Goa with the work ‘Life Tools’, that has their tools in clay placed alongside the khadau and a cast of their feet, which remain in perpetual transit of sorts.

Vandana Kalra

Vandana Kalra is an art critic and Deputy Associate Editor with The Indian Express. She has spent more than two decades chronicling arts, culture and everyday life, with modern and contemporary art at the heart of her practice. With a sustained engagement in the arts and a deep understanding of India’s cultural ecosystem, she is regarded as a distinctive and authoritative voice in contemporary art journalism in India. Vandana Kalra's career has unfolded in step with the shifting contours of India’s cultural landscape, from the rise of the Indian art market to the growing prominence of global biennales and fairs. Closely tracking its ebbs and surges, she reports from studios, galleries, museums and exhibition spaces and has covered major Indian and international art fairs, museum exhibitions and biennales, including the Venice Biennale, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Documenta, Islamic Arts Biennale. She has also been invited to cover landmark moments in modern Indian art, including SH Raza’s exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the opening of the MF Husain Museum in Doha, reflecting her long engagement with the legacies of India’s modern masters. Alongside her writing, she applies a keen editorial sensibility, shaping and editing art and cultural coverage into informed, cohesive narratives. Through incisive features, interviews and critical reviews, she brings clarity to complex artistic conversations, foregrounding questions of process, patronage, craft, identity and cultural memory. The Global Art Circuit: She provides extensive coverage of major events like the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Serendipity Arts Festival, and high-profile international auctions. Artist Spotlights: She writes in-depth features on modern masters (like M.F. Husain) and contemporary performance artists (like Marina Abramović). Art and Labor: A recurring theme in her writing is how art reflects the lives of the marginalized, including migrants, farmers, and labourers. Recent Notable Articles (Late 2025) Her recent portfolio is dominated by the coverage of the 2025 art season in India: 1. Kochi-Muziris Biennale & Serendipity Arts Festival "At Serendipity Arts Festival, a 'Shark Tank' of sorts for art and crafts startups" (Dec 20, 2025): On how a new incubator is helping artisans pitch products to investors. "Artist Birender Yadav's work gives voice to the migrant self" (Dec 17, 2025): A profile of an artist whose decade-long practice focuses on brick kiln workers. "At Kochi-Muziris Biennale, a farmer’s son from Patiala uses his art to draw attention to Delhi’s polluted air" (Dec 16, 2025). "Kochi Biennale showstopper Marina Abramović, a pioneer in performance art" (Dec 7, 2025): An interview with the world-renowned artist on the power of reinvention. 2. M.F. Husain & Modernism "Inside the new MF Husain Museum in Qatar" (Nov 29, 2025): A three-part series on the opening of Lawh Wa Qalam in Doha, exploring how a 2008 sketch became the architectural core of the museum. "Doha opens Lawh Wa Qalam: Celebrating the modernist's global legacy" (Nov 29, 2025). 3. Art Market & Records "Frida Kahlo sets record for the most expensive work by a female artist" (Nov 21, 2025): On Kahlo's canvas The Dream (The Bed) selling for $54.7 million. "All you need to know about Klimt’s canvas that is now the most expensive modern artwork" (Nov 19, 2025). "What’s special about a $12.1 million gold toilet?" (Nov 19, 2025): A quirky look at a flushable 18-karat gold artwork. 4. Art Education & History "Art as play: How process-driven activities are changing the way children learn art in India" (Nov 23, 2025). "A glimpse of Goa's layered history at Serendipity Arts Festival" (Dec 9, 2025): Exploring historical landmarks as venues for contemporary art. Signature Beats Vandana is known for her investigative approach to the art economy, having recently written about "Who funds the Kochi-Muziris Biennale?" (Dec 11, 2025), detailing the role of "Platinum Benefactors." She also explores the spiritual and geometric aspects of art, as seen in her retrospective on artist Akkitham Narayanan and the history of the Cholamandal Artists' Village (Nov 22, 2025). ... Read More