Kochi, a counter to Biennalisation

With its thrust on local culture, KMB stands out amid the homogeneity of most other biennales

Sue Williamson by her work at Aspinwall House.

At a talk at Art Basel in June this year, Shwetal Ashvin Patel, founding member of the Kochi Muziris Biennale (KMB) who’s pursuing his PhD at the Winchester School of Art in the UK, wondered if the ‘biennalisation’ of art around the world was ushering in a kind of ‘homogeneity’ and ‘flatness’ characteristic of any hegemonic structure.

“There’s been an explosion in the number of biennales – 316 at last count from less than 30 in the 1980s – and like in other spheres, globalisation has been erasing culture-specific, locality-specific distinctiveness in art as well,” Mr. Patel, who conducted an empirical study, along with the Zurich University of the Arts, on biennale-type events in contemporary art, argued.

The study made the team realise that a switch from the inevitably Eurocentric ‘models’ to local ‘practices,’ as seen in the bottom-up approach of the artists-driven KMB with its community participation, site-specific work and thrust on local cultures, offered a fitting counter to the dreary ‘homogeneity’ that pervaded most other biennales. “The world comes to Kochi for this ground-breaking re-invention of the biennale,” Mr. Patel, on his Biennale sojourn to Kochi, says.

“At the heart of my curatorial adventure lies a desire for liberation and comradeship (away from the master and slave model). Where pleasure and pedagogy could sit together and share a drink, and where we could dance and sing and celebrate a dream together…. The ethics of ceding authority as a curator in this space can result in the eros of sharing,” Anita Dube, noted artist of the radical art movement of the 1980s and curator of the edition, underscores in her curatorial pitch.

Broadly, if the maiden biennale chose to lay its focus on post-colonialism, the next, curated by artist Jitish Kallat attempted to “bring together sensory and conceptual propositions that map our world referencing history, geography, cosmology, time, space, dreams and myths”. The last edition, with Sudarshan Shetty at its creative helm, desired to give expression to the ‘intangible’ that’s been felt, while Ms. Dube’s curatorial venture hinges on the spirit of fraternity and inclusion.

The varied shades

Therefore, you have art practices of numerous shades – contemporary, traditional art of the marginalised communalities, culinary cultures, history-inspired, starkly political, socially conscientious, sounds that have become voices of subcultures, spectres of caste – coming alive across the venues of the biennale in the present edition.

“You’ll get to see and experience what only Kochi can give you – a sense of multiculturalism and plurality. The biennale has evolved, finding its unique multilingual tongue,” says V. Sunil, secretary of the Kochi Biennale Foundation.

The effects are everywhere

Mr. Kallat, curator and artistic director of the 2014 biennale and participating artist in the present edition, says that “a biennale is a powerful temporary artistic infrastructure, which when conceived thoughtfully holds the potential to ‘upregulate’ the kind of civic discourse that permeates its host town. Kochi is one such example where the effects of the biennale are everywhere.”

“In the absence of the customary ecosystem of museums and cultural institutions, the Kochi Biennale has managed to enter public consciousness in a significant manner,” he adds.