Tanya: Please provide an overview of Kochi-Muziris Biennale for those who are not familiar with the project.
Shwetal: Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB) was initiated in 2012 and its organizing body, Kochi Biennale Foundation, in August 2010. The foundation was spearheaded by two Mumbai-based Malayali artists, Bose Krishnamachari (b. 1963 Angamaly, India) and Riyas Komu (b. 1971 Thrissur, India).
Since its first edition in 2012, KMB has become one of the largest art and culture platforms in Asia. The foundation's mandate is to foster art education amongst all age groups, cultivate new audiences, generate artistic and cultural awareness.
The inaugural edition of the KMB was held in 2012 in Fort Kochi and Ernakulam, and has now successfully hosted five editions attracting millions of physical visitors and several million more in online engagement. KMB is known as the People’s Biennale for its egalitarian and popular appeal and includes international artist group exhibitions held across multiple venues such as the Students’ Biennale, Art by Children (Learning and Development) Program, Invitations Exhibitions and Public Programs comprising of talks, academic conferences, film screenings, theatre and musical performances, amongst other cultural activities.
Tanya: How is the Kochi Biennale Foundation primarily funded?
Shwetal: As a public charitable trust, the organization depends on the philanthropy of like-minded foundations, corporations and individuals to support their year-round efforts to showcase art and culture in the region. The government of Kerala is a founding partner of the Biennale, and provides the trust with an annual financial grant.
Tanya: The first edition really captured the attention of both locals and visitors––what was it like for you, especially as the founding executive officer?
Shwetal: The first edition of KMB was co-curated by the founding artists, Krishnamachari and Komu, and the large-scale group exhibition didn't have a curatorial title, but instead used the Foundation's mission statement as a guiding principle[1]. The mission statement was published in 2011 and remains a foundational text about the need, purpose and potential of an art biennial-like event in Kerala. I believe that the creation of this type of event was also, in part, a response to the lack of platforms for South Asian artists to show site-specific, conceptually rigorous, and ambitious work. The biennial provided artists an opportunity to respond to the socio-political realities of our times. In this sense, it can be summed up as an artist-led, artist-curated, public/private funded initiative.
The first edition brought together more than eighty-nine artists from Kerala and around the world. The artworks were presented across a number of venues in Fort Kochi, primarily Aspinwall House, a 130-year-old building that was the former trading premises of J. H. Aspinwall. The Scottish-Indian trading company moved its operations in the 1990s when it relocated to new warehouses in Willingdon Island, as the original site was deemed insufficient. Since then the building lay empty, in danger of falling down. Other venues such as Durbar Hall and Pepper House were also diligently restored and renovated in the lead up to the first edition of KMB, adding to a sense of growing arts investment in the local community. Initially, the KMB project was welcomed in Kerala, but later encountered some minor controversies with a group of Kerala-based artists. Overall, it has enjoyed the moral and financial support of both the main political parties that operate in the state, a unique occurrence in India[1]. Most importantly it has become synonymous with Kochi’s modern identity, especially Fort Kochi.
Tanya: The first edition was delayed by a year?
Shwetal: Initially, the first edition was planned to open in November 2011. However, after a change in government during elections in early-2011, the opening was postponed and eventually took place on 12th December 2012. This was a very difficult year as we were still trying to convince people in government and potential sponsors to support this fledgling, yet to be released, dream. The public in Kochi were curious and after word spread over several months; artists began visiting and working in Fort Kochi throughout the year. There was a great deal of interest and local participation, and what stood out in the first edition was the complex makeup of the audience. The audience was made up of diverse groups of people–– local, regional, and international. It felt like many had come to Fort Kochi on the promise that they would experience art unlike anything they’d seen before on the subcontinent. Although the Indian government had launched a visual art ‘triennial’ in the late 1960s, the project floundered by the 1990s and was later discontinued.[2]
Tanya: During the period when KMB launched, the only other major art event in India was the art fair in New Delhi?
Shwetal: In 2008, an Indian entrepreneur launched the India Art Summit (now India Art Fair) in New Delhi. The commercial trade fair included pavilions by galleries and exhibited solo projects by leading artists. This new commercial trade fair and a thriving gallery scene meant that there was a gap in the arts ecosystem of the subcontinent that artists could address and fill.
Tanya: KMB is known as an artist-initiated biennial. Please can you tell us a bit more about how this has functioned?
Shwetal: KMB was conceptualised as an artist-curated and artist-managed non-profit platform that prioritised artists and artistic practices. Each subsequent edition since 2012 has been curated by an artist. As an artist-initiated concept, the organisers felt that artists working in tandem with curators, were perhaps best placed to navigate the complexities of the field. Besides having an innate understanding of the challenges of artistic practice and the heterogeneity of audiences in South Asia, artists were considered best placed to make creative connections across the region and the international art world, whilst proposing new and innovative exhibition formats and public programs.
The KMB organisers prioritised artists within this paradigm and a great deal of the work at the first edition of the Biennale, more than seventy percent, was new site-specific work that responded to the spaces in which they were shown and the communities that live there. The venues included spice warehouses, abandoned buildings, public parks, museum galleries and historic sites dotting Fort Kochi, Mattancherry and Ernakulam.
Many sites were long forgotten, when the port of Cochin moved to Willingdon Island. Artists responded to these spaces in unusual and interesting ways. One memorable project from the first edition was Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto’s, Life Is a River (2012), made locally using cotton fabric, polyamide fabrics and pungent spices. Made in Kochi with local craftspeople, the work was placed in the attic of an old building which has since been demolished and has a hotel in its place. The venue also hosted works by other artists, including Zakir Hussain. Another memorable work from the first edition was Angelica Mesiti's Citizens Band–– again, housed in a derelict, dilapidated but functioning building close to Neto. Mesiti’s four-channel video work created an eerie experience for visitors, as it combined music, sound and film from different continents.
In contrast, the India Triennale had primarily used institutional venues in Delhi, such as the Lalit Kala Academy and other white-cube spaces.[3] Looking back, I think KMB created many new spaces for art, and artists in turn responded in ambitious and unexpected ways. Audiences were thrilled to see art in unusual venues, such as Aspinwall House, which had been private property for decades.
Tanya: A venue that was very prominent in the first edition was Durbar Hall. How did this become such an important space for KMB?
Shwetal: Durbar Hall, the former Maharaja of Travancore's Durbar or court, is now a Lalit Kala Academy arts center.[4] Durbar Hall was restored and renovated by the Kochi Biennale Foundation in 2011 as a primary venue for KMB. Out of an initial grant of Five Crore Rupees from the government of Kerala, for the creation of the biennial, more than Two Crore Rupees was spent on renovating Durbar Hall into an international-quality exhibition space. The award-winning architect Vikas Dilawri, a UNESCO Gold Award recipient, was entrusted with the renovation and he completed the project in November 2011. The renovated galleries are installed with state-of-the-art lighting and climate control, with more exhibition space and areas for video-based artworks and performance. This successful renovation was an early sign of the future of the project and its ‘Biennale Effect’, a term coined by academics, Professor Robert E. de Souza and Professor Sunil Manghani in their book, ‘India's Biennale Effect’ (Routledge 2014).
Tanya: Can you explain the key themes and aspects for each edition of KMB?
Shwetal: The second edition, which opened on 12th December 2014, was helmed by Jitish Kallat, a prominent Indian contemporary artist. Kallat is of Malayali origin and, like the two co-founders, based in Mumbai. His Biennale, titled, “Whorled Explorations”, looked at the mathematical history of Kerala and its geographical position in the Indian Ocean, working with themes at the intersection of science, history, movement and time. The maritime trade links of Kochi were also an inspiration and the biennial included more than ninety artists from over twenty-five countries.
Jitish Kallat, like Krishnamachari and Komu, had conducted extensive national and international curatorial research. A part of the process of commissioning artists was also an invitation to visit the site several months before the opening. In this way, artists were able to survey and research the local context and visit different sites. In conversation with the curators, artists were able to select a site that they felt was suitable for their work. I think this lends KMB a rootedness, which I think is sometimes missing in more white cube biennial experiences around the world.
The third edition, which opened on 12th December 2016, was curated by another Mumbai-based contemporary artist, Sudarshan Shetty. Forming in the pupil of an eye was the title lent by Shetty, and included over ninety artists and collectives from India and around the world. Shetty explored themes including the dichotomy between traditional and contemporary art forms, and the syncretic relationship between literature, visual arts, performance, music and cinema and included practitioners that are often overlooked in contemporary art exhibitions. The motif of the edition was Raul Zurita’s site-specific Sea of Pain (2012), a large water- and text-based installation that responded to the unimaginable tragedies unfolding in the Mediterranean Sea that year.
The fourth edition which opened on 12th December 2018 was curated by Anita Dube and was titled Possibilities for a Non-Alienated Life. Dube's exhibition foregrounded often marginalised Global Majority artists and art histories and also included several community-based projects that included cooking, educational workshops and gatherings. A large pavilion was commissioned by KBF, and Dube selected Anagram Architects to design the temporary space which served as an important forum for dialogue, meetings and performance.
Originally supposed to be held on the 12th of December 2020, the fifth edition was delayed by two years due to COVID, and was finally inaugurated on 12th December 2022, though not all venues were open to the public until 23rd December 2022. Curated by artist and writer Shubigi Rao, the exhibition was titled In Our Veins Flows Ink and Fire. Rao invited over ninety artists and collectives to explore themes including protest, dissent and how the power of collective action can stimulate societal change and art’s transformative nature.
Alongside each edition of the Biennale, the Foundation organizes programs which include conferences, film festivals, musical performances, theatre, dance and popular music. Since the third edition, the pavilion has been located in Cabral Yard, an adjacent site to Aspinwall House.
Tanya: Each edition of the Biennale has had an inimitable characteristic. What is it like setting up a new biennial and how did it come to be known as the People's Biennale?
Shwetal: The term “People's Biennale” emerged in 2014. I believe this slogan has its roots in the political history of Kerala and the various people's movements that have impacted the state’s socio-political journey. But I think that it also speaks to the diversity of the audience that attends the biennial and the fact that it is either free or relatively cheap to visit and experience KMB.
Kerala is famed as having almost hundred per cent literacy and has prioritized education, healthcare, women’s rights and the environment for several decades. The Biennale is therefore, I believe, a product of this socio-economic soil, and the moniker People's Biennale, along with Biennale City, emerged in the second edition. It has now widely come to be known as the People's Biennale and this reflects the egalitarian approach and accessible feel of the event. I think it also reflects the participation of people from diverse backgrounds who come and engage with the Biennale on their own terms. The organizers always maintained that they didn't want to create a popular event that dumbed down the artworks for mass consumption, but rather create an event that allowed visitors to engage with complex ideas and artworks on their own terms.
In my own experience, and through my personal research over the years, I have found this to be a successful strategy. Surveys I conducted in 2014 and 2015, included a series of twenty questions for different audience types. I interviewed a range of people over several months of the Biennale, eliciting interesting and quite unexpectedly sophisticated responses as to how people read and processed the artworks on display.
Another facet of the Biennale’s idea is the way in which, anecdotally, rickshaw drivers and local people have engaged with what are quite complex artworks and how they have created their own meanings. In many cases, seemingly lay audiences have created their own conceptual frameworks for understanding artworks, revealing overlooked readings. So when you walk around Fort Kochi a lot of local people you meet all have their own memories and stories to tell about what they've seen and what they've experienced at the Biennale over the years. The stories can be fascinating, and people, very knowledgeable. This aspect, I think, is quite unique in my experience as compared to other biennials that exist today in the international art world. Another aspect of the Biennale is that the Kerala government has been the founding and primary funding partner of the Kochi Biennale Foundation, and therefore it's the taxpayers, the citizens of Kerala, that are directly responsible for the sustenance of the Biennale. I believe this adds another dimension to the idea of a People's Biennale.
Tanya: It is a mammoth task creating such an event in Kerala for numerous reasons, with funding being an important one. Funding is essential for the creation and sustainability of any art event and that is also true of Kochi. How has the foundation managed to fund the Biennale?
Shwetal: Fundraising beyond the core grant provided by the government of Kerala is a perennial challenge for the organizers of the Biennale and one that in hindsight has managed to navigate fairly well from the beginning. Sponsors such as BMW, Lulu, South Indian Bank and several other corporates including CSR funds have gone towards supporting the Biennale. Additionally, a diverse group of patrons and philanthropists, private foundations and international arts councils have all helped to sustain the project and its running costs.
This matrix of funding has also been a source of strength for the KBF because it has been able to diversify its income and mitigate the challenges that are inherent in creating and sustaining such large-scale projects. There are several challenges that the foundation has faced. I mentioned the resistance towards the founding of the biennial in some quarters, but also its detractors in government and elsewhere. I think that today most people in Kerala would agree that the KMB has been a positive addition to the state’s cultural offer to India and the world.
Sceptics, particularly in certain intellectual circles, still question whether Kochi is the most appropriate site for what is now a nationally and internationally important event. Later, there were other questions, principally around the allocation of and utilization of funds. Despite these challenges, the KBF has maintained extremely high legal and financial compliance standards and has been transparent in its accounting.
I see the strength of the Biennale in its ability to communicate across socioeconomic groups and to serve as an important event locally, but also regionally, and internationally. So, whilst the challenges have been immense, I believe the successes have been remarkable also in many ways.
Tanya: Can you tell us how the artist-curators were chosen for each edition?
Shwetal: The first edition, as I mentioned, was co-curated by the two co-founders of the Kochi Biennale Foundation. Subsequent curators were selected through a selection committee process, much like other biennials, whereby a group of independent external members are invited to select a curator.
The board of KBF and the founders felt that artists may offer a unique viewpoint and could offer some fresh and out-of-the-box thinking in an increasingly homogenised art system. Typically, biennials are helmed by a group of high-profile curators seemingly applying similar concepts around the world. Instead artist-curators for KMB could perhaps bring a new toolkit of approaches and concepts, but also, promisingly, some new figures to prominence.
Tanya: Kochi, for the first time, was introduced to contemporary art at such a scale?
Shwetal: Kerala has a long tradition of translating foreign language books into Indian languages, and foreign language films are very popular. So there has been an appetite for international intellectual output, visual art, film, literature, music. Cinema has another major role to play here. The well-known passion of Malayali audiences for film festivals, but also book clubs, music recitals, libraries, I think, have all contributed to the atmosphere that made the Biennale and its unique offering attractive to local audiences.
Tanya: You have talked about the Biennale as a site of knowledge production, please can you elaborate on this notion?
Shwetal: I think we can consider the Biennale primarily as a site of knowledge production, and therefore, a site of education. Not education in the didactic sense, where the Biennale artworks are curated to teach people something, but certainly one can view the Biennale as a site of knowledge production where different forms of knowledge are produced through, for instance, dance, music, poetry, visual arts, performance and through discursive and pedagogic exchanges.
I believe that this art event can be seen as a site where different kinds of knowledge can be consumed, understood and disseminated. For instance, to share some examples, the Biennale always displays wall texts and the Biennale’s short guide in both English and Malayalam. I believe this has allowed local audiences who were not familiar with contemporary art language, or who perhaps didn't have English as their first language, to engage with complex ideas in their own mother tongue.
These texts were very important to the curators of each edition and they all felt that the text should reflect upon the artworks but should not necessarily spell out what the artworks were about. This approach therefore left room for interpretation in a way that perhaps is unusual when one is trying to describe an artwork or trying to perhaps convey certain ideas.
The early partnership between Google Arts & Culture and KMB are also examples of how knowledge can be created and shared during and after the Biennale.[5] Additionally, major programming and educational initiatives like the Students’ Biennale are an attempt to promote art education and to provide opportunities for younger practitioners to not only research and learn, but also to exhibit their art alongside a major exhibition such as the KMB.
Later in 2014-25, the ABC (Art by Children) program was initiated. The artist-led program took art curriculum, art training classes and teaching workshops directly into local schools. The Students Biennale, ABC program, Master Artist Workshops, Residencies, and other initiatives of the Kochi Biennale Foundation have all had an impact locally and regionally.
Tanya: Can you share what more is possible, assuming funding is streamlined?
Shwetal: Perhaps the largest positive impact on society, has been providing a platform for artists from the region to show their work alongside some of the most important artists working in the world today, also the Biennale has helped place Kochi on the national and international cultural calendar.
In the 2014 edition, Anish Kapoor exhibited alongside local and regional artists. This ‘levelling of the playing field’ by showing regional art alongside leading international art (on Indian soil), I think, has been a very positive development. Not just for understanding artistic practice from this South Indian region, but also platforming practices and giving voice to what has largely been marginalized through a process of globalization. Additionally, museums, curators, collectors, private foundations, embassies and arts councils have all started to regularly visit Kochi every two years to experience the Biennale. Of course, the art market has followed and several new galleries have established themselves, but I think this is good for artists who can now live and work in Kochi.
Tanya: Is there an impediment to the vision of the Biennale because of the challenge of funding?
Shwetal: I think the challenge of funding is something widespread and common around the art world and is not unique to Kochi. I think that the funding of non-profit art is complicated and it is something that I have conducted research on for the OnCurating.org issue 58 “Speculations: Funding and Financing Non-Profit Art” (2024) which explores many of these questions. I think that the challenges of funding are certainly an impediment to the non-profit arts, but I think with the appropriate frameworks and nimbler approaches, some of these challenges can be mitigated.
Tanya: Can you share how this Biennale has stood apart from others in the world?
Shwetal: I will come back here to the idea of the People's Biennale, the diversity of audiences, the site specificity, the local history, the fact that Kochi is part of a thriving local community and has a very rich, secular, multicultural history and has gone through phases of colonialism and yet has maintained its inherent character. I think all of these aspects come to play out when one wanders the streets and by-lanes of Fort Kochi.
Not only was it possible, but it was absolutely necessary if, as Dr. Thomas Isaac, the finance minister who first sanctioned the funding for the Kochi Biennale Foundation, said in an interview, that as Kerala becomes a middle income economy, that consumerism and consumption led growth had to be augmented by a strong cultural offering. Dr. Issac strongly favoured the idea that art, culture and education were strong factors when considering the growth strategy of a state like Kerala, a theoretical extension of the famed Kerala Model. And indeed, this argument can be extrapolated to the rest of India. Whilst India is a booming economy, it can be argued that it lacks adequate arts infrastructure and arts education opportunities. Without a strong and vibrant creative sector, some of the economic gains may be undermined if society was purely driven by consumerism.
Tanya: Why do you think introduction to curatorial studies, art education, and so on could be the answer? Would you be able to share your perspective on this?
Shwetal: Art education is incredibly important. Educational opportunities for the visual arts, cinema, music, performing arts, fashion, architecture, gaming etc. are incredibly important for a thriving and progressive economy.
Artists take risks. Artists speak truth to power. Artists, perhaps also, are more attuned to the direction in which society is going. Artists are able to poetically and imaginatively respond to these constant changes and help us see and perceive the world in new ways. There is ample evidence to support this view, both within the history of the subcontinent, but also internationally. I believe in the power of art and I think the arts can help us address and alleviate many of the humanist conditions that we see surfacing in the world today.
Tanya: Kochi cannot be imagined without KMB. In regards to the struggles that you are currently facing, do you feel a new curatorial format or public engagement ideas could work in its favour?
Shwetal: Kochi is essentially an experimental artist-led project. I think if one examines all the editions, there has been quite substantial and significant evolution in the model from each edition to the next. I believe that evolution has never really stopped and the organizers of the Biennale are cognizant that whilst educational and discursive trends have emerged and new standards adopted, the Biennale must evolve if it is to stay relevant. Kochi today is synonymous with the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, and indeed there's a lot of local anticipation leading up to each edition, but also nationally and within the region there's a great deal of anticipation around each new offering of the Biennale.
The Students Biennale is continuously evolving and affords young artists from across the country an opportunity to extend their practices and to gain experience within the field. And I'm sure that upcoming editions of the Biennale will also evolve, and new curatorial formats, programs, and ways of engaging the public will emerge.
I think institutional self-critique is absolutely vital and the Biennale should continuously question its role and relevance in the field. The Biennale should be a place that provides the context for healthy dissent and discussion in which people from different ideological and socioeconomic backgrounds can sit around the table and have constructive debate and arguments. It is a site of debate, resistance, protest, learning and sharing, imagination and creativity. But I think first and foremost, it is a site of knowledge production. And if we view the Biennale as a site of knowledge production, then I believe this is a constructive foundation on which to extend people's understanding, not only about artworks, but also about themselves.
Art should allow us to not only reflect on the world around us, but also ultimately reflect on who we are, what we believe in, and what can inspire transformation within us. Hopefully the arts can also bring us closer together. Although people may not all always agree with each other, we hope that the Biennale is a site where diverse groups can come together, debate, and engage with Art.
Dr. Shwetal Ashvin Patel is a writer and researcher practising at the intersection of visual art, exhibition-making and development studies. He works internationally—primarily in Europe and South Asia—and is a founding member of Kochi-Muziris Biennale in India, responsible for international partnerships and programmes. He holds a practice-based PhD from Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, where his thesis was titled ‘Biennale Practices: Making and Sustaining Visual Art Platforms’. He is a guest lecturer at Zürich University of the Arts, Royal College of Art, and Exeter University, besides being an editorial board member at OnCurating.org and a trustee at Milton Keynes Museum and Coventry Biennial. He lives between the United Kingdom, Belgium and India.
Notes
[1] Kochi Biennale Foundation Mission Statement (2011). https://www.kochimuzirisbiennale.org
[2] Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Indian National Congress. Kerala's major political parties are aligned under two coalitions, namely the Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the United Democratic Front (UDF) since the late 1970s.
[3] See: First Triennale India in New Delhi (11 Feb – 31 Mar 1968)
[4] National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi and Rabindra Bhavan Galleries, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, India
[5] Lalit Kala Akademi is founded by Govt. of India and is a national network of visual art centres.
[6] Google Arts and Culture, accessed on 28 March 2024, https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/kochi-biennale.