About CII & the Biennale | Banaras Culture Biennale 2026

Tradition is not the opposite of the contemporary

Living culture is knowledge in motion.

It resides in what is passed from one generation to another, but also in what each generation changes: a motif redrawn, a raga interpreted, a material reconsidered, an archive reopened, a technique adapted, an inherited form placed in a new context.

The CII Banaras Culture Biennale looks at tradition not as something fixed in the past, but as an active cultural language — carried forward through practice, memory, experimentation and exchange.

Banaras makes this particularly visible. Here, continuity and change have never been opposites.