Monsoons, mold… and a million visitors: Welcome to Kerala’s ‘People’s Biennale’ | art

SAnyone who brings you a bouquet of flowers. You can get a vase and place each stem in it one by one, allowing the arrangement to unfold on its own. At this level, as lead curator Nikhil Chopra points out, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale is not so much organized as created.

On a stroll through South Asia’s largest contemporary art biennale, creativity takes center stage. Against the backdrop of the lush strip of the port city’s backwaters and the historic Fort Kochi, the works of 66 artists revitalize Kerala’s grand colonial warehouses and bungalows where art seems less fixated than one might encounter.

The idea, as the biennial’s title For the Timebeing suggests, is to enter, to be present, to exit,” said multidisciplinary artist Chopra, who curated the show in collaboration with the artist-led organization HH Art Spaces, which he co-founded in 2013.

“This allowed us to use time in a way as a material, like clay or wood or charcoal, where we could invite time into each one of the artworks we were making and be present in the moment.”

In our age of distraction, biennials offer no immediate gratification. Take Birender Kumar Yadav’s installation, “Only the Earth Knows Their Work” about the forgotten workers in the exploitative brick industry, or Kulpreet Singh’s “Indelible Black Marks,” in which a video plays in a thatch fence, where panels of cloth are pulled poetically across scorched fields, simulating farmers tilling the land.

“There are a lot of factors contributing to pollution in Delhi, but it is easy to blame the farmers,” said 40-year-old Singh, who was born into a farming family in Punjab.

Now in its sixth edition, half of the artists participating in the exhibition are from India and Kerala, a share to which Chopra and the curatorial team devote most of their time. No international flights were made to scout the invitees, Chopra boasted. Instead, they relied on the relationships the Goan group had built with artists over the past decade.

“There is a very excited sense of freshness among people who receive an invitation from the Indian subcontinent,” Chopra said. This year’s international invitees include Marina Abramović, Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama, and Argentine artist Adrian Villar Rojas.

“We live in a world that is exhausted and filled with art, music, film and theatre,” Chopra said. “We are spoiled for choice to the point that I think the world is really interested in ideas and voices from this side of the economic hemisphere.”

The emphasis on intuitive approach to presentation is illustrated by Kolkata-based artist Jayashree Chakravarty. Since moving to Salt Lake City in the 1980s, she has noticed the nearby swamps turning to concrete. What we are left with is shelter: for now, to commemorate a natural world in decline.

“I am a silent observer,” said Chakravarty, 69. “Whatever I notice, I try to recapture it in my work.”

Resembling capillaries or intricate networks, large hanging scrolls of cotton fabric, jute fibers and seedpods invite visitors to inhabit and illuminate the works, posing a question that Chakravarti continues to ask herself: How can we bring nature closer together?

The curators realized that they had to be agile in an environment rich in mould, dent and humidity, and they did this so that the artists could also understand the conditions of spaces in which artworks are difficult to display. In 2018, Kerala was devastated by summer monsoon floods. This year, Chopra said the biggest challenge came in “starting from scratch,” renovating abandoned spaces and repairing roofs as the biennale does not have a permanent home.

The exhibition is expected to receive one million visitors, more than 80% of whom will come from within a 500-kilometre radius. It has strived to maintain its reputation as a grassroots biennale (tickets cost between 100 and 200 rupees, or less than £2), and all walks of life can be seen thronging the gallery, as well as the student biennale and dedicated ‘non-judgmental’ art rooms that host artist-led workshops.

The city of Kochi, formerly known as Cochin, is located between the Indian Ocean and the Western Ghats. But the communist-led country doesn’t just have a unique geographic location. It has passed through the hands of the Portuguese, Dutch and British, and remains a melting pot of cultures and religions: within walking distance are Santa Cruz Cathedral, Paradisi Temple and Dharmanath Jain Temple.

“Kerala has always been a place of critical thinking,” said Chopra, who participated in the biennale in 2014. “It is a place of very self-awareness.” “People see and find value in a cultural outing rather than say a fun trip or an outing,” he said before correcting himself. “This is a walk through art.”