In December 2012, a stretch of Kerala’s sea-fronted buildings – grand vestiges of the once flourishing colonial trade on the Indian Malabar Coast – opened to the public for the first time in decades. Vast former warehouses, abandoned factories, and the regal Durbar Hall in Kochi were resurrected for the city’s inaugural Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB). The pioneering international art exhibition was set in motion by the then culture minister for the state, M.A. Baby, with Kerala-born artists Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu, who together founded the Kochi Biennale Foundation in 2010. As India’s first and only biennale, KMB has been pivotal in expanding the country’s engagement with contemporary art and it has gained renown over the years for its consistently impressive range of artists.
Past lives, routes, and geographic and intellectual histories underpin the conceptualization of this biennale. In name, the contemporary location, Kochi, is converged with Muziris, a lost trading port on India’s southwestern coast, believed to have been washed away by floods in 1341. As Kochi replaced the hub, the area cemented itself as an entrepôt of entrepreneurialism, central to India’s lucrative spice trade.
The first edition placed this past at its forefront. ‘Kochi-Murizis is really the main character,’ says Shwetal Patel, part of the founding team. The heady cosmopolitanism, the comings and goings of mercantile classes, colonizers, and people of diverse faiths found form in a number of ambitious installations. Vivan Sundaram, one of India’s best- known artists, laid out a floor-based vision of Murizis using shards of pottery excavated from the archaeological site titled Black Gold (2012–2013). ‘It was a term borrowed from the historian Romila Thapar who described pepper in this way because that was the exchange between Kerala and the Roman Empire,’ explains Sundaram.
For many artists in India, the biennale was one of the first opportunities to respond to the country on its own ground. Mumbai gallerist Shireen Gandhy recounts, ‘It was on a completely guerrilla scale. The site felt very dominating and the possibility of artists from here doing something in direct response to Kochi felt like we really had something to offer.’
The opening, at times hectic and critiqued for its lack of women artists, labels, maps, and catalog, was nonetheless a remarkable feat given a seismic budget shortfall after bureaucratic changes, accompanied by accusations of mishandling of funds. Compounded by shipping delays, labyrinthine customs regulations, and unionized work forces, many installations ended up effectively being ‘live installed’ during the opening day. ‘There was a tremendous energy, a real sense of optimism. I think of it a bit like the YBA [era] in the UK,’ remembers gallerist and KMB trustee Amrita Jhaveri.
‘It was exciting and yet it was chaotic. Everything was being experimented with and devised,’ says artist Anita Dube, who later took on the role of artistic director for the fourth edition in 2018. ‘In my space there wasn’t even electricity until a couple of days before the opening, so I was literally working in the dark.’
This spirited and maverick approach was somewhat tempered and refined as the biennale formalized and distinguished itself with its first artist-curator, Jitish Kallat, appointed for the second edition in 2014. ‘Whorled Explorations’ presented a conceptually tight biennale remarked upon for its cohesiveness; as critic Geeta Kapur wrote, ‘cumulative meanings were gained through a systematic viewing experience.’ At the main venue, Aspinwall House, the sprawling, fantastical world of creatures and odd architectures built by Sahej Rahal splayed out across an old laboratory space and led to Mithu Sen’s film, I have only one language; it is not mine (2014).
In 2014, the rich offerings were augmented by the launch of KMB’s first Student Biennale. The event platforms talent from art schools across the country and has directly led to artists, like Sahil Naik, securing gallery representation. ‘Huge spaces were given to the students and it was obvious that the owners of those venues recognized the importance of supporting younger artists. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that at other biennales,’ enthuses Jagdip Jagpal, founder of London gallery Silvia’s Mother and former director of the India Art Fair. Running in parallel, it shares the egalitarian values of the KMB and demonstrates its mission to be an inclusive force within India. As such, there are no VIP openings for either biennale and attentive audiences come in droves for the event’s duration; over 600,000 attended artist Sudarshan Shetty’s third edition in 2016, ‘Forming in the Pupil of an Eye’. ‘We have an incredibly high literacy rate in Kerala,’ Patel remarks, ‘our audiences tend to read all the texts, watch all the films, and deal with complex artworks.’
Dube’s curation of the fourth edition in 2018 maximized this ethos. Fired by India’s increasingly majoritarian politics, she had an inclusive vision that exceeded the pre-existing exhibition spaces by incorporating billboards, a touring bus helmed by the musical collective Oorali and a pavilion designed by Anagram Architects in collaboration with B. L. Manjunath that was an invitation for free expression with an open mic and a blackboard. ‘I wanted to win over ordinary people and make them feel within the biennale and the pavilion that this is a space that is happier, freer, and more exciting than that which the right-wing promises. I wanted no-one to feel excluded, including the right. It’s an emotional strategy; feeling warmth, comfortable, and included remains with people,’ Dube explains. She balanced arresting works like the Guerrilla Girls’ billboard posters, translated for the first time into Malayalam, Kerala’s widely spoken language, with fragile pieces like Song Dong’s interactive installation Water Temple (2018) and Shilpa Gupta’s poignant work comprising a canopy of speaking microphones suspended over metal spikes that pierce sheets of poetry For, In Your Tongue, I Cannot Fit (2017– 2018) that addressed censorship.
This emphasis on uninhibited speech was a well-timed, if unintentional, counterpoint in a year when the institution had to deal with accusations of sexual misconduct against Komu, resulting in his resignation. With the organizing team realigned as a result, and after an enforced hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Shubigi Rao, an artist who was included in Dube’s edition, was appointed as curator for the biennale’s fifth edition, which opens on December 12, 2022. Despite the elongated time frame and possibility for revisions, Rao has maintained her original curatorial note for the central show, titled ‘In Our Veins Flow Ink and Fire’, themed around finding hope in despair. ‘I was already considering how in the darkest moments we can find an absurdity that can be a source of fierce joy and resistance,’ she remarks.
This year sees a significant video element as a result of contingency planning in 2021 for an unrealized digital edition, while other works will come to Kochi after previous lives, including Cecilia Vicuña’s film Quipu Mapocho (2016–2017), recording a series of commemorative performances on the banks of the Rio Mapocho in Chile, and Thao Nguyen Phan’s ongoing video installation First Rain, Brise Soleil (2021–), a sequence of stories set along the Mekong Delta exploring Vietnam’s political history. ‘The majority of artists have stuck with us through the postponements,’ says Rao. This includes Haegue Yang and Naik, who will present new commissions, along with Samson Young, whose site-specific installation Reasonable Music (2021), realized in partnership with Art Jameel and The Burger Collection, will be presented at Aspinwall House.
The Kochi Biennale Foundation has ambitious plans beyond the exhibition itself. Alongside their year-round programming in India, which includes residencies and education programs, their reach is set to expand. Aarti Lohia, head of the SP Lohia Foundation and trustee of KMB, explains, ‘Our foundation is leading philanthropic support of the National Gallery’s Modern and Contemporary Program in London, and we are connecting the British institution and particularly its curators and artists involved in the program there to the KMB.’ The Hayward Gallery too is joining in with the launch of the Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation/Kochi-Muziris Biennale Award that will see an emerging South Asian artist from the biennale chosen to exhibit at the London institution’s HENI Project Space in 2023. The partnership marks a new transnational phase that intends to relocate and share Kochi’s knowledge and ideas. ‘London is a really interesting site for important conversations,’ says Patel. In this case, ‘here is a Bangladeshi foundation supporting a prize in London that is germinated in South India.’ The scope for these roving dialogues can only be expected to broaden.
Dr. Cleo Roberts-Komireddi writes and speaks on contemporary South and Southeast Asian art.