New Delhi, July 23 -- It was in 2013 that I had shown work at the Arsenale-one of the major venues of the Venice Biennale-and now 13 years later, walking through the 61st edition simply as a visitor is a different experience. The city is the same but I am not, and I keep asking myself whether I had actually become more observant in the interim period or just older.

There is a conversation that runs alongside every edition of the Venice Biennale that has nothing really to do with art. It is about the carbon footprint and the cost of what it takes environmentally and financially to move an entire global art world into a lagoon city for six months every two years. But then a great curator assembles voices you would not have reached on your ...