T he countdown to the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB), 2014 has begun. The mega art event that opens on December 12 will showcase multi-media works of over 90 artists at seven venues across Kochi. Expectations are rife and high about this second edition, after the maiden contemporary art show met with resounding success. Viewers, sceptics, critics and followers wait in anticipation for the curtains to go up.
Much rests on Jitish Kallat, the Mumbai-based artist and curator of KMB 2014. One of the leading names in contemporary art, Jitish works across mediums and has participated in major exhibitions around the world with solo projects in major museums. His works are part of prized collections of individuals and museums, internationally.
Born in Mumbai in 1974 Jitish’s parents come from Thrissur. But it is Mumbai and urban India that motivate him naturally. “I am an uprooted Malayali, a bit like a potted plant,” he says. Jitish speaks of the massive work his team is into and of his round-the-clock dialogue with artists, in what he terms as the “third semester of curatorial pregnancy.”
Excerpts from a chat with the artist who enunciates his vision, calling the exhibition ‘Whorled Explorations’.
What is your curatorial vision? Your guidelines to artists for this project?
Two historical episodes from this region became starting points. The 14th to 17th Centuries was a time when the Kerala School of Astronomy and Mathematics was making transformative propositions for locating human existence within the wider cosmos. It was also the moment when the shores of Kochi were closely linked to the maritime chapter of the ‘Age of Discovery’. The maps changed rapidly in the 1500s with the arrival of navigators at the Malabar coast, seeking spices and riches… And within the revised geography were sharp turns in history, heralding an age of conquest, coercive trading and colonialism, animating the early processes of globalisation.
A reflection of this navigational history, as well as a shift of one’s gaze, deliberating on the mysterious expedition of our planet Earth hurtling through space at over a dizzying 1,00,000 kilometres per hour, where none of us experience this velocity or comprehend its direction, were two ‘prompts’ made in my letter to artists.
And Kochi becomes central to the project?
I’d say that ‘Whorled Exploration’ takes a view “from” Kochi and not a view “of” Kochi. Kochi in this instance is the viewing device and not the vista.
What are you suggesting to viewers then?
At a very simple level, the project does something we do every day. We go back and forth in time. We might move an object back or forth in space to see it clearly.
One might say that this takes an exaggerated form in the biennale. Some art works may take us back into history or project our attention into the far future, only for us to get a renewed perspective on the present. Others may take us close to a narrative from a neighbourhood in Taipei, or depart in distant space to look at the satellite waste we’ve thrown into orbit around planet earth. I would like viewers to have a multi-dimensional, non-linear, synchronous examination of ideas that matter to our existence.
Over 90 artists. What was your process for selecting the participating artists?
The crux of the curatorial process is dialogue. I began by writing letters, first to 15 artists whose art practices spoke closely to some of the inaugural ideas. My letters were not a thematic curatorial note but a sharing of intuitions in the form of ideas and imagery.
My letters would also vary from artist to artist but the two thought co-ordinates we just spoke about went into every letter.
Can you speak a bit about the title?
When I look back at my notebooks for the biennale, the first scribble was the motif of a ‘whorl’ or the ‘spiral’, a form that carries on into the title of the project. ‘Whorled Explorations’ takes off from the phonetic kinship between world and whorled, but introduced into the sound of the ‘world’ the motif of the vortex, a pointer to life-forces, a recurrent image in plants, our thumb-print, the spin in the oceans and galaxies… an image of creativity but I also think of the hand-drawn scribble as a mark of erasure or over-writing, the concealment of an error or change of mind, a recurrent gesture in the creative process.
What kind of works can one look forward to?
It will be a mix of experiential, narrative and conceptual propositions, all interlaced through the project; some very large works and others that are smaller than a child’s palm, from the expansive to the miniscule. Some pieces take you to dense narratives…
The German artist Peter Rösel will exhibit 458,42 m/sec, 2014, an installation made up of tiny flickering light bulbs that mimic the corresponding rotational ground-speed of planet Earth as measured in Kochi.
There is more support for the KMB…
We are running on the collective optimism of the team, building the project from the ground; a small team stretched to its capacity.
The arts philanthropy landscape in the country is a long way from where it should be and it’s a big struggle. On my part I’ve given this project 15 months of my time, away from my work and studio, as an honorary curator only because the KMB holds a new promise and many of us have to come in to incubate this promise.
From the fact that contemporary art is still a novelty for viewers here, what kind of reaction are you expecting?
My one resounding memory of the last biennale was watching a video by Angelica Mesiti where about a dozen viewers sat through 26 minutes of video playing on four walls. People were not used to this format of four-channel videos but they stayed on and watched.
I feel the local audience brings fresh eyes to contemporary art. Unlike so many other places, a lot of the locals are citizens engaged in cultural, social and political processes which more than compensate for their lack of exposure to contemporary art.
