This biennale, amateur artists, too, get a chance to shine

September 29, 2014 09:45 am | Updated 09:45 am IST - Kochi:

An orientation workshop for 15 young curators of the Students’ Biennale inprogress at Pepper House library in Fort Kochi.a

An orientation workshop for 15 young curators of the Students’ Biennale inprogress at Pepper House library in Fort Kochi.a

On a Sunday afternoon in Fort Kochi, a group of artists, art historians, curators, writers, and students sit around a table at Pepper House library discussing the execution of the first Students’ Biennale that will run parallel to the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2014. Over the next two months, the group will spread out over the country to meet hundreds of art students, learn about art education in India, and curate an exhibition of the students’ works.

“The Students’ Biennale is unique effort to mentor young curators. They will now go and see the works of BFA and MFA students from art colleges across India, bring back selected works, and bring it together in Kochi,” said artist and art historian Suresh Jayaram. He is part of the Foundation for Indian Art and Education (FIAE), which along with the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA), is partnering with the Kochi Biennale Foundation. KBF has conceived and is executing the Students’ Biennale project.

The organisers picked a group of 15 young curators from a pool of 70 applicants to curate the Students’ Biennale. The curators were in Kochi on Saturday and Sunday to meet the project’s team of experts who will mentor them throughout the project. During the orientation workshop, they got to discuss their ideas with Mr. Jayaram, Vidya Shivadas of FICA, Bose Krishnamachari, director of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, and Riyas Komu, director of programmes of KBF. They also had a session with Jitish Kallat, curator of the second edition of the Kochi Biennale.

“It was important that we picked a mixed group of curators comprising artists, art writers and historians, Ph.D. students, and others who are working in the field with galleries or independently,” said Ms. Shivadas, a curator based in New Delhi. Among the curatorial team are art students with no experience of curating an art exhibition as well as artists who have been exhibiting their works and curating others’ exhibitions for a while, said Mr. Komu.

The project is also embarking on a larger mission of studying the process of art education in India. “We are trying to collect information about art colleges in the country, their problems, the lacunae in art education, and what can be done as a remedy. Till date, there is no document about how art colleges function, how students learn, or how teachers are paid. The data we collect will be used to create a white paper about art education and this can influence the government about remedial measures to address the issues in the field,” said Mr. Jayaram.

While the contemporary art scene mostly focuses on artists from India’s urban centres, the project is an attempt to bring artists and art educators from all over the country onto the same platform. Just the two States of Karnataka and Maharashtra have more than 200 art colleges, said Ms. Shivadas. “But what are people doing in these institutions? We’re all working in our own circles, sometimes duplicating our efforts. This gives us a chance to come together and start a dialogue that includes everyone,” she said.

Works that are part of the Students’ Biennale will be exhibited at the Mohammed Ali Warehouse in Mattancherry from December 13, a day after the second edition of the Biennale kicks off.

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