'Islamic violins' at Biennale

More than a millennium after rudimentary forms of the violin came to India from his ancestral land, Kenya born Ibrahim Quraishi has lent another dimension to the aesthetics of the string instrument by featuring it in the country's first biennale here.
A row of 30 white violins that the artist of Uzbek-Yemeni descent has hung tastefully from a tile-roof ceiling of a key venue in the ongoing art festival here. Prime among points of interest of the video and sound installation in Fort Kochi could be familial moorings of the artist.
40-year-old Quraishi lives in the Netherlands, but his parents hail from that belt of the world believed to be the birthplace of the violin � in its primitive shape and tenor.

Musicologists differ about the exactness, but largely believe the violin originated in Inner Asia, from where its variants spread to India no less than 10 centuries ago, besides to other parts of the world � and finally acquired its modern characteristics in 16th-century Italy.
At the ongoing Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Quraishi's much publicised 'Islamic Violins' showcases instruments bought from Pakistan.
"They then made their way through Amsterdam, where I live. It is that that I sculpturally perfected," says the ld artist who works with mediums like photography,photo painting, video, film, installation, performance, dance and theatre.

The Kochi Biennale Foundation notes that eventual arrival of the set of violins to this city is another summarisation to the instrument's long, convoluted and dramatic history.

There is however much more than music to work at Pepper House. It is homage to the Fluxus movement that developed an anti-establishment and anti-commercial approach to art in the 1960s, organisers of the three-month event slated to end on Mar 13 said.
Quraishi says 'Islamic Violins' is inspired by Persian, Arabic, Urdu and Turkish poetry's attempt to address the ideal of the beloved in its most untouched and perfected form.
Hence, installation at the sea-facing heritage building has also a grainy mini-video which produces sound that stand in absolute contrast with the serenity of the image.
The 'low-tech' explosion of violins and survey of the debris created by the onslaught interfere with the contemplation of beauty.