For Okwui Enwezor, noted curator-critic, the Kochi Muziris Biennale (KMB) feels incredibly familiar in a powerful way.
A visit to the 108-day event here on Monday took him back to the days of the Johannesburg Biennale, which he had curated in 1996, two years after the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa. “It is as significant as what the Johannesburg biennale represented for me, because of the incredible freedom,” said the 51-year old Nigerian, at a Let’s Talk programme organised at Aspinwall House venue as part of KMB’14. “When I stand here today nearly two decades later and look out, it feels as if I am looking from here to Johannesburg. The KMB has the potential for a vital link between Asia and Africa,” he said. During the lecture, Enwezor, who has been curating and co-curating several groundbreaking exhibitions and eight biennales around the globe, also observed that the exhibition is a challenge that Kochi offers to the rest of India.
“The public here make the biennale incredible. All the same, this biennale, which features a conversation between the artists of India and artists from the world, provides the public with a new tool box of thinking and a new optic lens to the world,” said Enwezor.
