Sculptor and installation artist Sudarshan Shetty addresses the very definition of contemporary art in his first curatorial venture, the third edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. He has invited 97 artists from 36 countries to participate in the Biennale and build works that will last beyond this event. Observing that being an artist can be very isolating, Sudarshan has admitted in recent interviews to the media that this massive project is also about self-growth and discovery. “I got access to artists’ studios, their minds and processes,” he had said in Vogue Art Report . His impressive artistic journey, with installations featuring skeletons, cars and chairs, has also seen a confluence of poetry, dance, theatre and politics. It is this and his multitasking abilities that make him the right person for the job, say art editors and critics. Known for his preoccupation over the concept of time, Sudarshan’s title for this Biennale is ‘Forming in the pupil of an eye’, a line taken from Sharmistha Mohanty’s poetry. “The line is indirectly taken from a Vedic idea that when a sage opens his eye to the world, he assimilates all its multiplicity in that moment of vision as one. Eyes are the only reflective surface in the body. All our ancient philosophical ideas come from our physical or corporeal being,” he begins. He sees the Biennale as something that is in the process of unfolding itself through time. An excerpt from his interview with Melange:
For a change, poets, musicians, visual artists and dancers are all part of this Biennale.
The performance series begins with Chandralekha’s theatre piece, Sharira , that is scheduled for December 13. Padmini Chettur is an artist within the biennale. Incidentally, Padmini trained and worked with Chandralekha for many years. It would be interesting to see how her work, unfolds to reveal this relationship with her mentor over the first week, when she is going to perform with her dancers. The biennale is about such conversations that are expected to be across locations within the biennale, and across generations of artists.
Last year, you set the ball rolling with Chilean poet, Raul Zurita as the first artist on the list.
Once I started with practitioners outside of the expected names, it began to unfold like a chain of events. One artist led to another and after a period of time, a lot of practices began to fall in line, and that led the way to reveal what the Biennale could be about. The process of selection of the artists, in that sense, was much like how I work with my practice as an artist.
The Biennale as an allegory for India’s seven rivers.
If the Biennale were to continue being a people’s biennale, as it has been from the beginning, it has to become continuous with our larger social and cultural lives. When I talk about rivers, I am aware that I must allow for their shifting trajectories. So the challenge of conceiving the Biennale in flow was to identify these rivers that may keep shifting their course, intertwine and flow from various tributaries as we approach the time of the Biennale, and perhaps even beyond that time.
The future of public art in India.
I see this Biennale as public in nature from the day it began in 2012. The enormous local participation makes this a special one. Moreover, the character of most locations in the Biennale is eminently informal and thus opens it up to active participation. There are a few events that are outside the venues of the Biennale, some on the streets, that will have a way of embracing the city of Kochi into the folds of the Biennale. In that sense, I think KMB does establish some pointers to the future of Public Art in this country.
