Artist in Residence at 1 Shatnhiroad in Bangalore, 2026/2027

Munish Wadhia (b. 1972, Mombasa, Kenya) is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Sweden. His ideas are concerned with collective memories, inheritance, and the amnesiac absence of knowledges in Westernised discourses. His practice is an ongoing process of thinking through memory, experience, and the condition of diaspora as a site of knowledge. It embraces the multiplicity and intersections of his inheritance, tracing their residues and relations across histories, memory, place, and material.

Photo: Mattias Lindbäck

Munish Wadhia

His practice often takes the form of large-scale, site-specific, immersive installations, where materials and sensory elements are brought into relation with objects connected to his ancestral roots and locally found materials, creating works that explore absence, residue, and layered histories. Research in archives, historical texts, and collections informs his work, tracing the entanglements of personal, European, and Swedish histories into his installations.

During his residency in Bangalore, Wadhia aims to bring an artistic discourse that has been shaped by the experience of diaspora into the local context of 1Shantiroad, where they share a similar heritage. This dialogue seeks to bridge the “diasporic space”—a negotiated identity that Avtar Brah describes as fuelled by a “homing desire,” and imagined idea of the notion of a “homeland”. Through his practice, Wadhia wishes to engage these ideas and how they relate to the local context. From the imagined homeland to the national imaginary.

Wadhia holds a Master’s in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London. His recent solo exhibitions include Eskilstuna Konsthall (2025), Södertälje Konsthall (2023), and Konstadamien (2022). He is the recipient of the Carl Axel Valén Stipendium (2024) and the Gerhard Bonniers Exhibition Grant (2020), and was an IASPIS Stockholm Residency Grant Holder (2024/25). Recent group exhibitions include: “Auntie”, at SKF/Konstnärshuset (2025); and “Stockholms´ Cosmology” at Lilevalchs Konsthall (2024). His current exhibition is a large-scale public installation for Konstväxling, in the Slussen subway (2025–2026), Stockholm.

munishwadhia.com

@munishwadhia