Buoyed by the stupendous success of the maiden Kochi Muziris Biennale—India’s first biennale which earned Kochi a place on the art map of the world—nations, organisations and art patrons are rallying behind art carnival whose second edition opens in 140 days.
“The credibility of the Kochi Biennale Foundation is pretty high, thanks to the meticulousness shown in organising each aspect of the maiden edition, surmounting roadblocks. Which is why, now there’s literally a scramble for joining hands with it,” says artist Riyas Komu, one of its founders.
To begin with, the coming edition will have wholehearted support from the state government.
Even after the closure of the opening edition, biennale ensured its enduring presence in the Kochi art scene by way of art education programmes, art residencies, public art events and the ongoing arts and medicine programme.
Biennale founder artist Bose Krishnamachari’s mammoth travelling installation, an archival project called Laboratory of Visual Arts (LaVA) featuring a ever-growing collection of several thousand books and DVDs on visual arts, performance, design, fashion, architecture and philosophy besides art-related material got a stop-over at Pepper House early this year.
If stiff opposition and litigation stifled support for the maiden edition, the forthcoming edition will enjoy support from the diplomatic missions of Mexico, Canada, Norway, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Australia, Germany and the Netherlands, to name a few. The Canadian Art Council, the British Council, the Japan Foundation, the Australian Art Council and the Goethe Institute have all thrown their weight behind the art event.
Travel and other expenses of artists from these countries will be borne by them. Most of these countries have schemes to support art, and has employed it as a means of soft power diplomacy. We have similar programmes too, but such facilities are seldom extended to contemporary art practitioners, said an artist associated with the biennale.
The forthcoming edition will feature more or less the same number of artists, 80, as the debut edition. Several artists have already scouted the venues, too. Some are still in town, interacting with the locals.
With art education and propagation in sharp focus, this edition will have three parallel projects. “The first is the main biennale. This apart, there will be a nationwide student biennale project in which 15 young curators will travel the country, visiting designated groups of government art institutes to select student art projects, both individual and collective, for presentation at the biennale,” said Mr. Komu. The project will be a vehicle for underprivileged art students in government institutions to get maximum exposure to contemporary art practices. Conversely, it will be a measure of the quality of art education prevailing in the country, he said.
