Kochi-Muziris Biennale

Last updated

Kochi-Muziris Biennale
കൊച്ചി-മുസിരിസ് ദ്വൈവാര്‍ഷിക കലാപ്രദര്‍ശനം
Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2018.png
Logo of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2018
GenreInternational Art Exhibition (Contemporary art)
Begins12 December 2022
Ends10 April 2023
Location(s) Kochi, Kerala, India
Founded2012;12 years ago (2012)
Attendance600,000 (2016-17) [1]
People
Website www.kochimuzirisbiennale.org

The Kochi-Muziris Biennale is an international exhibition of contemporary art held in the city of Kochi in Kerala, India. It is the largest art exhibition in the country [2] and the biggest contemporary art festival in Asia. [3] The Kochi-Muziris Biennale is an initiative of the Kochi Biennale Foundation with support from the Government of Kerala. The concept of Kochi-Muziris Biennale was ideated and executed by Dr. Venu Vasudevan IAS, who was the Government of Kerala's cultural secretary. The exhibition is set in spaces across Kochi, with shows being held in existing galleries, halls, and site-specific installations in public spaces, heritage buildings and vacant structures.

Contents

Indian and international artists exhibit artworks across a variety of mediums including film, installation, painting, sculpture, new media and performance art. Through the celebration of contemporary art from around the world, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale seeks to invoke the historic cosmopolitan legacy of the modern metropolis of Kochi, and its mythical predecessor, the ancient port of Muziris.

Alongside the exhibition, the Biennale offers a rich program of talks, seminars, screenings, music, workshops and educational activities for school children and students. [4]

The Birth of Kochi-Muziris Biennale

In May 2010, Mumbai based contemporary artists of Kerala origin, Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu, were approached by then culture minister of Kerala, M. A. Baby to start an international art project in the state. Acknowledging the lack of an international platform for contemporary art in India, Bose and Riyas proposed the idea of a Biennale (a large scale international exhibition) in Kochi on the lines of the Venice Biennale.

Kochi Biennale Foundation

The Kochi Biennale Foundation (KBF) is a non-profit charitable trust engaged in promoting art & culture and educational activities in India; primary amongst them the hosting of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. KBF works around the year to strengthen contemporary art infrastructure and to broaden public access to art across India.

The Kochi Biennale Foundation is also engaged in the conservation of heritage properties and monuments and the upliftment of traditional forms of art and culture.[ citation needed ]

KBF was founded in 2010 by artists Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu .

The First Kochi-Muziris Biennale

Aspinwall House, one of the main venues of the biennale Aspinwall House.jpg
Aspinwall House, one of the main venues of the biennale

The First Kochi-Muziris Biennale began on 12 December 2012. [5] The Biennale hosted 80 artists with nearly 50 percent foreign artists, site-specific works and a sustained education programme in the three months. As a run-up to the event, in April, the Durbar Hall Kochi will host German modern artist Eberhard Havekost's exhibition "Sightseeing Trip", held in collaboration with Dresden State Art Collections. The Aspinwall House exhibits the art works of 44 artists spread across the premises.

Entry was free till 23 December which was then replaced by ticketed entry at ₹50 to help pay for daily running costs. According to artist and Kochi-Muziris Biennale artistic director Bose Krishnamachari support has come in many forms. Shalini and Sanjay Passi held a INR 25,000-per-head dinner in the capital to raise funds, raising 550,000 (US$6,900). Google met with the foundation and has offered help with the website, which received 7.5 million hits in the first month. The Jindals of Jindal Steel and Power Limited, the late Kerala Congress leader T.M. Jacob, R.K. Krishna Kumar of Tata group, Jayanta Matthews of Malayala Manorama and the businessman Shibu Mathai have all donated. [6]

The sites for the Kochi-Muziris Biennale were:

  1. Aspinwall House
  2. David Hall
  3. Pepper House
  4. Moidu's Heritage
  5. Durbar Hall
  6. Cabral Yard
  7. Parade Ground
  8. Fort Kochi beach
  9. Kashi Art Gallery
  10. Jew Town Road Godown
  11. Rose Street Bungalow
  12. Cochin Club
  13. Gallery OED https://www.thehindu.com/features/friday-review/art/a-brush-with-new-colours/article5192998.ece
  14. David Horvitz

The Second Kochi-Muziris Biennale

The second edition of the biennale cost about ₹17 crore, slightly up from the ₹16.5 crore spent on the first edition. The Kerala government's contribution fell to ₹3 crore from ₹9 crore despite pleas for financial assistance. The organisers relied on sponsorship and online crowd funding for meeting the expenses. The number of visitors grew to five lakhs in the second edition, an increase of one lakh from the first edition. [7]

First Urban Space Dialogue in Kochi

In March 2015, the Kochi Muziris Biennale Foundation partnered with Center for Public Policy Research, Cochin for the first Urban Space Dialogue in Kochi to advocate for the need for creating urban spaces in Kochi. [8] The Dialogue featured Nuru Karim of Nu.De; Raj Cherubal of Chennai City Connect Foundation and advisor to CPPR; Dr Dhanuraj, chairman, CPPR; Jitish Kallat, curator of biennale 2014–15; Bose Krishnamachary and Riyas Komu founders of the Biennale. [7]

The Third Kochi-Muziris Biennale

The third edition of the Kochi Muziris Biennale opened on 12 December 2016 and was curated by Sudarshan Shetty. [9] The Biennale was visited by more than six lakh people in its third edition. [1] The exhibition was concurrently staged at 12 venues [10] and featured 97 works as well as 20 events. [11] Sudarshan was declared curator of the 2016 Kochi-Muzirs Biennale by the Minister for Culture, K. C. Joseph at an event in the State capital Thiruvananthapuram on 15 July 2015. [12] He was unanimously chosen as curator by an Artistic Advisory Committee appointed by the Kochi Biennale Foundation for the third edition. The Committee comprised artists Amar Kanwar, Atul Dodiya, Bharti Kher and Jyothi Basu, art critic Ranjit Hoskote, patron Kiran Nadar, gallerist Shireen Gandhy along with KBF trustees Sunil V, Riyas Komu and Bose Krishnamachari. [13]

Sudarshan Shetty was born in Mangalore in 1961, with his family moving to Bombay within a few months of his birth. He has since been based in Bombay. His works have been exhibited in solo and group shows in India and abroad, including at the Gwangju Biennale (2000), Tate Modern, London (2001), Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (2001), Centre Pompidou, Paris (2011), Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010), and Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2012).

The list of artists at the 2016 KMB can be found on the Kochi Muziris Biennale website.

The Fourth Kochi-Muziris Biennale

The fourth edition of Kochi-Muziris Biennale opened on 12 December 2018 and was curated by Indian artist Anita Dube.

The Fifth Kochi-Muziris Biennale

In May 2019, it was announced that Singaporean artist and writer, Shubigi Rao would curate the fifth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale from December 2020 to April 2021. [14] [15] Rao had previously exhibited at the fourth Kochi-Muziris Biennale in 2018, the sole Singaporean representative. [16] Titled "In our Veins Flow Ink and Fire", the first announced artist list involved 25 participating artists and collectives, featuring names such as Arpita Singh, Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency, Iman Issa, Joan Jonas, Melati Suryodarmo, Samson Young, Slavs and Tatars, Thảo Nguyên Phan, and Yinka Shonibare. [17]

Both Kochi-Muziris Biennale founder Bose Krishnamachari and Shubigi Rao would be jointly featured on the 2019 edition of the ArtReview Power 100 list for their work on the Biennale. [18]

“In Our Veins Flow Ink and Fire” finally opened on December 23, 2022 after being postponed twice due to Covid-19 and then again the night before the opening on the 11th of December 2022 due to “organisational challenges.” [19] 53 Artists signed an open letter to the Biennale Foundation detailing the organisational shortcomings and exhorting the Board and Advisors to make structural changes in future editions. [20] The edition faced logistical and financial challenges, but achieved a successful outcome with considerable support from the Indian art community. [21]

Reactions and Controversies

According to Tate Modern, Kochi-Muziris Biennale was the best biennale they had ever seen. The biennale accrued 150,000 visitors in its first month and 250,000 visitors in its second, averaging a thousand visitors a day (as high as 5,000 daily and 10,000 on weekends, early January). Local people have stepped up, on an individual level, realising what the biennale has done for them, socio-economically and culturally, and in terms of putting Kochi on the international culture map. McKinsey and companies have expressed their interest in studying the Biennale to know its economic effects. [6]

According to Karthyayani G. Menon, director of Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai, Kerala – unlike Mumbai, Baroda or Kolkata had not been in the forefront in encouraging artists and giving them good platforms but now she hoped that the biennale would mark a change to that situation. [22]

Many eminent artists in Kerala raised concern over the alleged lack of transparency in the way the funds were spent by Kochi-Muziris Biennale foundation. At the same time many known contemporary artists of the state of Kerala had come out in support of the event as it could help in enhancing the image of Kochi. [23]

With the 2016 demonetization of the Indian economy, several artists and the organizers of the Biennale had to overcome a struggle to get things in place for the opening of the exhibition. However, the Biennale received a boost when at the official opening, the government of Kerala promised $1.1M funding and support for a permanent venue to cement its place as the Venice Biennale of South Asia. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who is the leader of the Left Democratic Front government and long-time secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in the state, said the Biennale matched Kochi's multi-layered history of settlement by Arabs, Chinese, Jews, Portuguese, Dutch, English and different migrant communities from India. Vijayan announced ₹7.5 crore in funding for the Biennale, the highest sum a state government in India had ever given an art event. The government would support a permanent venue for the "mega-prestigious" event that had been the key to the success of the Kochi Muziris Biennale, he said.

The fifth edition of the Biennale was mismanaged by the organisers leading to a last-minute postponement which led to stranded visitors who had travelled from all the way across the globe. [24] The Biennale has also faced accusations of modern slavery, including non-payment of wages, and non-attribution of workers' contributions to artworks. [25]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ranjit Hoskote</span> Indian poet and curator (born 1969)

Ranjit Hoskote is an Indian poet, art critic, cultural theorist and independent curator. He has been honoured by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, with the Sahitya Akademi Golden Jubilee Award and the Sahitya Akademi Prize for Translation. In 2022, Hoskote received the 7th JLF-Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia Award for Poetry.

T. V. Santhosh is an Indian artist based in Mumbai. He obtained his graduate degree in painting from Santiniketan and master's degree in Sculpture from M.S. University, Baroda. Santhosh has acquired a major presence in the Indian and International art scene over the last decade with several successful shows with international galleries and museums. His earlier works tackle global issues of war and terrorism and its representation and manipulation by politics and the media. Santhosh's sculptural installation "Houndingdown" was exhibited in Frank Cohen collection ‘Passage to India’. Some of his prominent museum shows are ‘Aftershock’ at Sainsbury Centre, Contemporary Art Norwich, England in 2007 and ’Continuity and Transformation’ show promoted by Provincia di Milano, Italy. He lives and works in Mumbai.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amar Kanwar</span> Indian filmmaker

Amar Kanwar is an Indian filmmaker. His work challenges the limits of the medium in order to create complex narratives traversing several terrains such as labour and indigenous rights, gender, religious fundamentalism and ecology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sudarshan Shetty</span> Indian artist

Sudarshan Shetty is a contemporary Indian artist who has worked in painting, sculpture, installation, video, sound and performance. He has exhibited widely in India and more recently he has become increasingly visible on the international stage as an important voice in contemporary art. His work has been exhibited at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan, and the Tate Modern, London, England. The artist has been a resident at the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, United States, and was a Ford Foundation Fellow at the New School for General Studies, New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chittrovanu Mazumdar</span>

Chittrovanu Mazumdar is a contemporary Indian artist of Bengali-Indian and French descent. Mazumdar has been described as a "conceptual artist" and a "post-structuralist" while some critics consider it difficult to classify his oeuvre into a single artistic tradition or even into any consistent genre of his own. Mazudmar has referred to himself as an "expressionist painter" but has also said he generally prefers not to use "a particular word to qualify" his work because it comprises different kinds of media and forms, and that art is more interesting when fully given over to the viewer's own experience rather than constrained by the prescriptive power of labels.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Riyas Komu</span> Indian Multimedia artist

Riyas Komu is an Indian multimedia artist and curator based in Mumbai. He has invested his time in art education and developing art infrastructure in India. Komu's works are inspired by social conflicts and political movements and topics like migration and displacement. His hyper-realistic oil portraits of people resemble socialist-realist propaganda art, with one of his portraits titled Why Everybody should Look Like Mao.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">K. M. Madhusudhanan</span>

Madhusudhanan is an Indian film maker and artist, also known as K. M. Madhusudhanan. His debut feature film, Bioscope has received many awards. He is working with different media in art, including sculpture, printmaking installation art and film.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bose Krishnamachari</span> Indian painter

Bose Krishnamachari is an Indian painter and art curator based in Mumbai, India.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rajeeb Samdani</span>

Rajeeb Samdani is a Bangladeshi industrialist and art collector. As of 2021, he is the managing director of Golden Harvest Group, a Bangladeshi conglomerate, and the founder and trustee of Samdani Art Foundation which produces the Dhaka Art Summit.

Dhaka Art Summit is an art summit held in Dhaka, Bangladesh and is organised by Samdani Art Foundation, a non- profit art infrastructure development organisation founded by Nadia Samdani. and Rajeeb Samdani in 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samdani Art Foundation</span> Private art foundation

The Samdani Art Foundation is a private art foundation founded in 2011 in Dhaka, Bangladesh that aims to increase artistic engagement between the art and architecture of Bangladesh and the rest of the world. It is best known for producing the bi-annual Dhaka Art Summit, which is the highest daily visited contemporary art exhibition in the world, welcoming over 477,000 visitors in its fifth edition in February 2020. It completed its sixth edition in 2023. The foundation produces education programmes and exhibitions across the year in collaboration with Bangladeshi and international institutions and is one of the most active art institutions in South Asia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Suresh K. Nair</span> Indian artist

Suresh K. Nair is an artist based in Banaras. Nair obtained his national diploma in mural painting from the Institute of Mural Painting Guruvayur, Kerala under the guidance of Mammiyur Krishnan Kuty Nair. He was inspired by the works of Rabindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose, Benode Behari Mukherjee and Ramkinker Baij and continued his studies at the Department of Painting, Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan. Nair has acquired a presence in the Indian and international art scene over the last decade with several shows organized by regional and international galleries and museums, and created many murals in India and abroad. His early works are based on Kerala murals, both in terms of technique and ideas. One of his modern paintings, ‘Cosmic Butterfly" is owned by Essl Museum, Vienna, Austria since 2010. His works were exhibited in the US, Spain, and Canada, and his awards include the Elizabath Green Shield Foundation Scholarship (1999) of Canada; Fulbright Fellowship ( 2006–07) for an Educational Exchange Program at Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia under Professor Nicholas Kripal; and the State Award of Kerala Lalithkala Akademi, Ministry of Culture, Government of Kerala.

Sheela Gowda is a contemporary artist living and working in Bangalore. Gowda studied painting at Ken School of Art, Bangalore, India (1979) pursued a postgraduate diploma at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, India (1982), and a MA in painting from the Royal College of Art in London in 1986. Trained as a painter Gowda expanded her practice into sculpture and installation employing a diversity of material like human hair, cow-dung, incense and kumkuma powder. She is known for her 'process-orientated' work, often inspired by the everyday labor experiences of marginalized people in India. Her work is associated with postminimalism drawing from ritualistic associations. Her early oils with pensive girls in nature were influenced by her mentor K. G. Subramanyan, and later ones by Nalini Malani towards a somewhat expressionistic direction depicting a middle class chaos and tensions underplayed by coarse eroticism. She is the recipient of the 2019 Maria Lassnig Prize.

SiGNS Film Festival is one of the short film and documentary film festivals in India. The tenth edition was conducted in October 2018 in association with the Kochi-Muziris Biennale

Rohini Devasher is an Indian contemporary artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shalini Passi</span>

Shalini Passi is an Indian art collector, and philanthropist based in New Delhi.

The Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2018 was the fourth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, an international exhibition of contemporary art held in Kochi, Kerala. This edition which was curated by Anita Dube began on 12 December 2018 and ended on 29 March 2019. Like the previous editions, Aspinwall House, Pepper House, Kasi Art Cafe, Cabral Yard, David Hall are the main venues of this biennale. This biennale was inaugurated by the Chief Minister of Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan. The Kochi-Muziris Biennale is an initiative of the Kochi Biennale Foundation with support from the Government of Kerala.

Shubigi Rao is an Indian-born Singaporean contemporary artist and writer known for her long-term, multidisciplinary projects and installation works that often use books, etchings, drawings, video, and archives. Her interests include archaeology, libraries, neuroscience, histories and lies, literature and violence, and natural history. Rao has exhibited internationally, presenting work at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022, 10th AsiaPacific Triennial in 2021, 10th Taipei Biennial in 2016, the 3rd Pune Biennale in 2017, the 2nd Singapore Biennale in 2008, as well as the 4th Kochi-Muziris Biennale in 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sameer Kulavoor</span> Indian contemporary artist

Sameer Kulavoor is an Indian contemporary artist and founder of one of the earliest specialised design studios in India, Bombay Duck Designs.

K R Sunil is a visual artist hailing from Kodungallur, Kerala. He is an alumnus of the College of Fine Arts, Thrissur, where he developed his passion for photography. Sunil's work primarily focuses on human life; often ethnographic portrayals set against the backdrop of social and environmental issues. The recurring themes in his art documentation include the sea, maritime history, and climate change. The powerful, investigative representation of common people's struggles in a complex society through his work intents to inspire social change and bring attention to important issues. Sunil has received multiple awards for his series on various socio-relevant topics. For instance, his series titled 'Chronicle of a Disappearance,' which explored the dwindling ponds of Kerala, won him the India Habitat Photosphere Award in 2016. His 'Vanishing Life Worlds' series, which depicted the lives of the old port city of Ponnani, was exhibited at the Kochi Muziris Biennale in 2016. Additionally, his 'Manchukkar - The Seafarers of Malabar' series, which documented the last surviving group of dhow workers along the Malabar coast, was exhibited at the Uru Art Harbour in Kochi in 2018 and at the Clarinda Carnegie Art Museum, USA in 2021, while also getting printed by a Swiss publication the same year. Sunil's series 'Home' explores the impact of climate change on coastal homes and livelihoods. It was part of exhibitions by the Kochi Muziris Biennale Foundation at Kochi and Alappey in 2021. Furthermore, his photography series titled 'Chavittu Nadakam: Story Tellers of the Seashore' sheds light on the lives of Dalit Christian performers of the age-old art form Chavittu Nadakam and how climate change affects them. He has participated in the curatorial exhibition of Mattancherry by artist and curator Riyas Komu. Mattancherry photography series gazes the subaltern livelihood with a concrete ethnographic document to the contemporary cultural historiography Kerala. Mattancherry Island is a major hub of many waves of sea root connections from various parts of the world.

References

  1. 1 2 "LuLu Financial Group's Adeeb Ahamed pledges Rs 1 crore to 2018 Kochi-Muziris Biennale". The New Indian Express . 3 August 2018.
  2. "I want Kochi Biennale to go on,says ex-CEO Manju Sara Rajan". The New Indian Express . 14 April 2018.
  3. "Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2018: Final list of artists to be out on August 15". The Week. 3 August 2018.
  4. "Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2018".
  5. "Kochi becomes Biennale city". The Hindu. 13 December 2012. Retrieved 17 January 2013.
  6. 1 2 "Kochi's gift to the world". The Hindu. 24 February 2013. Retrieved 25 February 2013.
  7. 1 2 "Urban Space Dialogue- CPPR and Biennale". April 2015.
  8. "Urban Space Dialogue". 24 March 2015.
  9. "Kochi-Muziris Biennale Announces The Curatorial Vision". Biennial Foundation. 1 October 2016.
  10. "Biennale 2016: Kochi all set to open its heart for art lovers". The New Indian Express. 11 December 2016.
  11. "12 MUST-SEE WORKS FROM KOCHI-MUZIRIS BIENNALE 2016". Verve. 8 January 2017.
  12. "Kochi Biennale Foundation Announced Sudarshan Shetty As The Artistic Director And Curator of the Third Edition of Kochi-Muziris Biennale". Biennial Foundation. 15 July 2015.
  13. "A People's Biennale: A Conversation With Kochi-Muziris Biennale Co-Founders Bose Krishnamachari And Riyas Komu". Biennial Foundation. 9 March 2016.
  14. "Shubigi Rao to Curate Fifth Kochi-Muziris Biennale". Artforum International. 9 May 2019. Archived from the original on 26 July 2020. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
  15. "Artist Shubigi Rao to curate Kochi-Muziris Biennale". The Times of India. 10 May 2019. Archived from the original on 26 July 2020. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
  16. Nanda, Akshita (10 May 2019). "Singapore artist Shubigi Rao to helm South Asia's largest visual art biennale in 2020". The Straits Times. Archived from the original on 26 July 2020. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
  17. Tse, Fion (22 July 2020). "Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2020 Reveals First Artist List". ArtAsiaPacific. Archived from the original on 26 July 2020. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
  18. "Power 100: Most influential people in 2019 in the contemporary artworld: Bose Krishnamachari & Shubigi Rao". ArtReview. 2019. Archived from the original on 26 July 2020. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
  19. Pallavi Surana (22 December 2022). "India's Kochi-Muziris Biennale Return After Two Years of Delays, Full of Hope and Sound". ARTNews.
  20. "Open Letter from the Artists of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2022–23 - Notes - e-flux". www.e-flux.com. Retrieved 29 December 2022.
  21. Russeth, Andrew (17 March 2023). "Artist Shubigi Rao: 'This rage is an incredibly powerful force'". Financial Times. Retrieved 22 January 2024.
  22. "Biennale reflects changing Indian art scene in a decade". The Hindu. 17 February 2013. Retrieved 26 February 2013.
  23. "Biennale will enhance Kochi's image: artist". The Hindu. 13 January 2012. Retrieved 14 December 2012.
  24. Kumar, S. Anandan & Surya Praphulla (12 December 2022). "Art world dismayed over last-minute postponement of Kochi Biennale's main show". The Hindu. ISSN   0971-751X . Retrieved 14 December 2022.
  25. Sudeep, Theres (16 November 2022). "Kochi-Muziris Biennale is back again. So is its dirty war with angry, unpaid contractors". ThePrint. Retrieved 14 December 2022.

Further reading

Commons-logo.svg Media related to Kochi-Muziris Biennale at Wikimedia Commons