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| A picture from the exhibit Ummijaan: Making Visible A World Within. |
lizabeth Kuruvilla
In 2012,
several weeks into the inaugural Kochi Muziris Biennale, the Fort Kochi island
venue continued to play host to an admirably steady stream of visitors. For
someone used to the elitism and exclusionist tendencies of cultural events in
New Delhi, there was a certain provincial charm to the pride with which the
Malayalis had embraced this international art event.
The city
hummed with excitement: billboards all the way down from the airport; a
mandatory slot in the daily television news. It became the place for residents
to take visiting relatives; and every family, and certainly students, it
seemed, were making it a point to stamp their attendance at the biennale at
least once. According to a curatorial team member who has been stationed in the
city for the past several months, this year too, autorickshaw drivers have been
giving free rides to people associated with the biennale.
But two
years down the line, Kochi still appears an unlikely place for the event, given
the paucity of contemporary art in the city. Jitish Kallat, artistic director
of the Kochi Muziris Biennale that started on Friday, looks at it differently
though: “Unlike so many other places, a lot of the local audiences are citizens
engaged in cultural, social and political processes, which more than
compensates for their lack of exposure to contemporary art. At one level I’d
say that the lack of familiarity with contemporary art could help draw a
differently rich experience of art as one’s view is free of preconceptions.”
Even though
it continues to be beset by problems of resources, the biennale has started
taking toddler steps in other directions. Curatorial ambitions, for one, run
deep, with Kallat being invited to helm this year’s show. The theme, Whorled
Explorations, is based both on Kerala’s maritime history from the 14th-17th
centuries as well as the attempt in the state to “locate human existence within
the wider cosmos”. It has resulted in some fascinating interpretations.
The star
attraction is evidently Anish Kapoor’s new work, a water vortex created at the
jetty of Aspinwall House in Fort Kochi titled Descension, which is aimed at
“destabilizing our experience of the solidity of the ground we stand on”. In
fact, the biennale has been successful in influencing the creation of several
new works by artists of the stature of Bharti Kher (Three Decimal Points/Of A
Minute/Of A Second/Of A Degree uses pendular and navigational objects to
explore the concepts of time and cartography); the Italian artist Francesco
Clemente (Pepper Tent, quite literally a series of tents with drawings of
things he saw around Kochi); Sudhir Patwardhan (Building A Home: Exploring The
World, pegged on the idea of migration); and Gulammohammed Sheikh (Gandhi And
Gama, “a triptych that imagines a confrontation across centuries between two
key protagonists in the story of colonialism in India”). Vasco da Gama, in
fact, plays a central role not just here, but also in the works of performance
artist Pushpamala N. and graphic storyteller Sarnath Banerjee.
The works of
American artist David Horvitz and Swiss artist Christian Waldvogel attempt to
resist fundamental norms. Horvitz’s The Distance Of A Day has two phones with
video recordings of a sunrise and a sunset, taken at the very same time in
different parts of the world. In The Earth Turns Without Me, Waldvogel seeks to
cancel the earth’s eastward motion by flying in an aeroplane westward at an
equal speed. Kader Attia presents paintings which depict stamps from nations
that have gained independence and reflect, through space shuttles, moon
landings and such, their utopian dreams. Neha Choksi’s work has the artist
rowing a melting iceboat.
Besides the
94 artists presented at the biennale are equally fascinating partner shows,
including Dada On Tour, a show that marks 100 years of Zurich’s Dada heritage,
and Ummijaan: Making Visible A World Within, which brings together private
photographs, taken by the curator’s great-grandmother, of the Kutchi Memon
community which settled in Kochi after independence.
For visitors
during the opening days of the Kochi Muziris Biennale, the Kerala government’s
restrictions on alcohol may prove to be a dampener. But take heart in the fact
that there’s nothing that a generous serving of beef fry (try banning this!)
won’t fix.
The Kochi
Muziris Biennale is on till 29 March. For details, visit www.kochimuzirisbiennale.org
