Sift Pavilion, Mumbai
Public Art — 2026
SIFT, a multisensory pavilion by Suchi Reddy, debuted at the Architecture and Design Film Festival’s (ADFF) Pavilion Park in Mumbai 2026. Supported by Godrej Properties Ltd, the installation transforms the humble rice sieve, or chalanee in Hindi—an everyday object found in nearly every Indian household—into an immersive architectural experience that captures the swirling energy, density, and ambition of Mumbai itself.
Conceived as a multisensory spiral, SIFT gathers visitors inward, guiding them through concentric layers of bamboo sieves that modulate light, shadow, sound, and motion. At its core, vibration becomes visible and sound acquires rhythm, turning the humble act of sifting into a fully immersive spatial encounter. Mumbai is evoked not as a fixed form, but as a living passage—an ever-shifting convergence of lives and desires, where energies rise, dissolve, and reassemble in continuous flux.
At the heart of SIFT is the idea of the city as a centrifuge. Mumbai—often described as a city of dreams—embodies a constant process of striving, sorting, and becoming. Reddy reimagines the rice sieve as both metaphor and material: a tool of sustenance and care that becomes a vessel for memory, ritual, and collective experience. As visitors pass through spiraling walls of woven bamboo sieves enhanced with reflective material, they become both actors and audience within a continuously unfolding narrative.. The porous surfaces filter sunlight by day and cast intricate shadows, evoking the act of sifting and the circular rhythm of breath.
This sonic environment, composed by Reddy’s frequent collaborator Malloy James, is inspired by the rhythmic “swish” of the rice sieve in motion. A calming, meditative soundtrack emanating from the center of the pavilion, the core of the work brings visitors to a central space for reflection and calm, emulating the effect of architecture, home, and ritual in a chaotic urban space – a spot in the middle of a reflective, layered spiral that invites a bodily, primal calm.
