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“Blurring the boundaries” seems to be the underlying theme of the upcoming Kochi Biennale, which is titled “Forming in the Pupil of the Eye”. Sudarshan Shetty, artistic director and curator of the third edition, has drawn on mythical accounts of India as the land of seven rivers and is using that as a metaphor to show the flow, convergence and divergence of various art streams. December 12 onwards, 97 artists from 36 countries — poets, visual artists, writers, dancers, musicians — will descend on Kochi for 108 days to celebrate art in all its forms. Avantika Bhuyan lists some of the highlights:
The venues: Twelve breathtaking venues in Fort Kochi-Mattancherry and Ernakulam will host the main exhibition. These restored heritage properties were earlier overgrown locations, dilapidated godowns and have been reclaimed by the Biennale Foundation as venues for art. They don’t serve as mere backdrop but are integral to the context of the works being showcased. Some of these include Aspinwall House, Cabral Yard, Pepper House, Durbar Hall, Kashi Art Gallery, Anand Warehouse, and more. The twelfth venue, Kottapuram Fort, was added to the list recently, with just two weeks to go for the opening.
Revisiting historical ties: Artists from either sides of the Arabian Sea will come together in a collaborative project, the “Trans-Indian Ocean Artists Exchange”, which will run parallel to the Biennale. Organised in association with the Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah, and Dutch artist Mo Reda, the event seeks to revisit ancient ties between Kerala and West Asia and manner in which new forms of exchange, based on contemporary art and culture, could be developed. Emirati artists, Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim and Mohammed Kazem, will be showing their works from their two-month-long residency at the Pepper House Residency Exhibition. And in 2017, two Indian artists will head to Sharjah for a similar residency at the Maraya Art Centre.
Performance art: Keeping in sync with the theme, this year, the Biennale will feature works by artists from across disciplines such as master cartoonist E P Unny, Malayalam litterateur Anand and graphic artist Orijit Sen. The highlight of this edition is a very strong performance art segment, with theatre practitioners, dancers and musicians combining their form with strong visual art and aural elements such as video projections and voice-based installations. A must-attend is Zuleikha Chaudhari’s Auditioning the Plaintiff, Rehearsing the Witness: The Bhawal Court Case 2016. A performance and an exhibition, the show draws from her research into the infamous case about identity proofs, impostor and inheritance. Then there is Composition on Water by Anamika Haksar, which brings together stage and installation work to question systems of oppression in modern society. Also, interesting is the Prime, a voice-based installation by The Camille Norment Trio on the properties of sound.
Contemporary interpretations: For the first time, art enthusiasts will get to see contemporary interpretations of the finely detailed, hand-painted pichvais from the town of Nathdwara, Rajasthan, in the official collateral exhibition, “Pichvai Tradition & Beyond”. “We will be exhibiting a unique installation of 365 works that push the boundaries of tradition by capturing the daily shringars of Srinathji for each day of the Hindu Liturgical calendar,” says Pooja Singhal, who created this atelier. “These works are a private passion, without any known precedent in the vast corpus of pichvais that exist in the world.”
Pond Near the Field: This collateral exhibition by the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, in association with the Madhavan Nayar Foundation, focuses on the works of five artists K P Krishnakumar, K M Madhusudhanan, Surendran Nair, C K Rajan, and N N Rimzon. Alumni of the College of Fine Arts, Trivandrum, these artists developed a subversive art practice that had great impact on the Indian art of the 1980s-90s. “Sketching on tissue paper, painting on cigarette packets, making collages from newspaper cutouts and magazines, these artists continued to explore the intensity of economical tools such as charcoal, graphite and ink, and also the accessibility of prints,” writes Roobina Karode in her curatorial note.
The third edition of the Kochi Biennale will open on December 12, 2016
The calendar of events can be viewed at www.kochimuzirisbiennale.org