Curiosity begins in the space between knowing and not knowing. It is the impulse that makes us look twice at something familiar, discover something new, or linger over something we cannot immediately place. In a world where almost everything can be searched, identified, and understood within seconds, we tend to mistake information for discovery.
For an artist, however, that distance between wondering and knowing remains necessary. Curiosity is not merely the beginning of making. It asks why something is the way it is, what might exist beyond what is immediately visible, and what else might emerge if we were to look at it differently.
Inside and outdoors, the craft and colours mingle to create a wonder unlike others
Fittingly, Hermès’ 2026 theme, Venture Beyond (L’appel du large), places this impulse at its centre. Pierre-Alexis Dumas, artistic director of Hermès, describes it as a call to step outside ourselves and move towards the unknown. Rather than treating exploration simply as a matter of going somewhere else, the theme gives space to the impulse itself: The moment curiosity interrupts routine and makes us wonder what might happen if we followed it.
And it is this very idea that finds a natural counterpart in the practice of visual artist Svabhu Kohli. Working across art, ecology, and community, Kohli’s practice is rooted in the relationships between people and the living world around them. “My work lives at the intersection of art, ecology and community,” he explains, “inviting collective participation, dialogue and deepened relationships with the living world around us.” His interest lies particularly in the interdependencies within nature, and in “the ways in which plants, forests and the many species that inhabit them coexist, communicate and shape one another.”
Elements of Kohli’s imaginations, as they found form in the natural world
For Hermès, Kohli translates this interest into a fantastical ecosystem spread across four store windows in New Delhi. Forests and oceans occupy the same imagined landscape, their boundaries gradually becoming less predictable. Coral reefs mimic forest floors, seaweed moves like ribbons, and jellyfish drift through a world that refuses to settle neatly into one environment. When Kohli encountered the theme of Venture Beyond through his conversations with the Hermès Communications team, he says he wanted to “reinterpret nature, not replicate it but rather root it in magical realism where the two ecologies slip playfully into one another.” The artist describes magical realism as a way of approaching nature with “curiosity and wonder,” rather than assuming that it is already understood. By bringing forms that do not ordinarily exist alongside one another into the same landscape, the installation makes their connections more apparent.
The windows are not conceived as separate scenes, but as different views into the same evolving world. The landscape moves from dawn to dusk, eventually arriving at a nocturnal fourth window, where the atmosphere shifts once again. Rather than presenting four distinct places, the progression allows us to encounter one imagined ecosystem as it changes with time. And there is something to discover within these landscapes, too: The emblematic codes of Hermès have been woven into Kohli’s compositions, appearing not as overt additions, but as details that exist naturally within the imagined ecology. “Rather than making them feel placed, I wanted them to exist naturally within the landscapes, almost hidden in plain sight,” he says. For the viewer, recognising them becomes another small discovery, a visual Easter egg that rewards closer attention without disrupting the world around it. The house’s familiar visual language becomes part of Kohli’s landscape, rather than something imposed upon it.
An evening to celebrate and to look beyond what may be at the Hermès store in Delhi
And this is where the installation becomes most interesting. Its details are not offered all at once. They ask us to look closer and, in doing so, reveal another layer of the image. What initially appears to be an impossible meeting of forests and oceans gradually acquires its own internal logic. The closer one looks, the more the distinction between the two begins to dissolve.
Perhaps this is where curiosity finds its value: Not in the quick satisfaction of finding an answer, but in the desire to keep looking after one has found one.
A fantastical meeting of Hermès products and marine forms
To Venture Beyond, then, does not necessarily mean travelling farther. Sometimes, it means allowing something familiar to become unfamiliar again. And in a world where answers are increasingly easy to find, perhaps the more poignant question is this: Is it worth being curious?
Words by Aditi Veer
Featured Image: Svabhu Kohli’s Venture Beyond, Hermès, New Delhi
