Kochi Muziris Biennale - Forming the Pupil of an Eye
Kochi Muziris Biennale is an exhibition of contemporary art that takes place in Kochi once every two years. This year they presented a unique amalgamation of 97 artists from 35 countries, spread across 12 venues, over a period of 3 months.
The biggest venue among the twelve is Aspinwall, where you start with, and can buy tickets. You are given a map, and need to get to different venues to see all the exhibits. Most of the venues themselves are old, picturesque heritage buildings. Spaces like warehouses, empty yards and old bungalows have been loaned out to the biennale for a few months. Eight of these were nearby (in a 2km range) and you can walk/cycle between them.
Visiting the biennale was an amazing experience. I witnessed various art forms – paintings, sketches, sculptures, audios, videos, mixed media, performance and participative pieces, and immersive installations with lengthy and complex narratives. And since much of it was difficult to comprehend, expect to run into anything- and be stunned, overwhelmed, or underwhelmed.
Some of the more vivid and rememberable, my favorite installations were:
1) “Calls” by Yuko Mohri – This Tokyo-based artist gathers familiar, discarded objects, and transforms them into kinetic-sonic installations. Taking up an appropriate white-tiled space, a former laboratory, these delicate pieces interfere with intangible energies such as light, wind, gravity, and electromagnetics, and fill the room with a gentle tinkling music. One can find bells, forks, glasses, horns, magnets, solenoids, ribbon, cloth, coil, all moving in response to friction and force. There is a Japanese belief that the departed ancestors 'call' on their descendants. Her work is a contemporary response to such folk beliefs and customs, by making the invisible visible and heard.
2) “Prime”, a sound installation by Camille Norment - In a room facing the sea, washed by ambient light and sound, is a series of benches playing recordings of deep, resonant voices which are humming tunes which seem raw, and pre-lingual. The hum causes the benches to vibrate. The seats face a wide verandah overlooking the sea. As you sit on the benches, you feel the sound vibrations in your skin and body- it is as though they are physically communicating with you, drawing you into their sphere, evoking something very primal and universal.
3) The much written about “Sea of Pain” by Raul Zurita consists of a large body of dark but shallow seawater that one needs to walk through. At the end of this stretch- you see a wall with Zurita's words. They recall the three-year-old boy Aylan Kurdi, whose image made global headlines in 2015 after he drowned in the Mediterranean Sea amid the European refugee crisis. As you read her dedication to Galip Kurdi, one of the unknown casualties of the Syrian war, with your feet immersed in seawater, you realize the reality of the war on terror and the loss of innocent lives.
4) “Tale of the god of the kiln” by Takayuki Yamamoto – In a dark room, lies the sculpted figure of a man lying face-up on a platform, with one arm outstretched- an artist presumably. He throws a small golden ball from his belly button every once in a while. This work becomes the avatar of an artist wanting to make money out of nothing. As if from his concepts and ideas he can make gold from air.
5) “The Pyramid of Exiled Poets” by Ales Šteger is a huge Egyptian styled pyramid, built with wood, bamboo matting, cow dung and mud. The pyramid is a tribute to poets who had been cast-out of their country for publishing their writings. Take a stroll inside, in the dark, and you can hear a chorus of overlapping voices – poets reciting their work, in multiple languages, as if troubled by the open!
6) “Dwelling Kappiri Spirits” by Gabriel Lester - This installation featured a tilted wooden room with windows covered with white curtains. The lace curtains seem to flow out of the windows, capturing a non-existent breeze, capturing that moment of time – like a freeze-frame. An accompanying audio/visual of waves crashing around in the background points to what has happened (a strong breeze blew through) and what might happen (the house may fall over). To add to it -inside the house is a forever burning cigar— an offering to the Kappiri Muthappan, the local Kochi deity that represents the African slaves that were killed here after the Dutch ousted the Portuguese colonial rulers. It is a seductive, trippy and haunting image and a space for remembrance, to recall the history that we now inhabit.
7) An exhibit of Kashmir photos by Bharat Sikka in Anand Warehouse: The warehouse – a dilapidated structure with the smell of spices wafting in was inseparable from the images themselves. One is overwhelmed by how far removed and alone the people shown must be, living in the war-stricken region. Kashmir presents such beautiful landscapes that one would feel blessed and well as unfortunate in staying there.
8) In an installation in TKM Warehouse – “Out of Ousia”, Alisja Kwade creates an environment that plays on our understanding of surroundings and reality. It consist of a two-sided concrete wall, a double mirror and a large glass, to chart out 4 quadrants. As you circle the work, the elements in each quadrant seem to bleed into each other, jumbling the perception of what is a verifiable object and what is its makeshift double.
9) All over the Fort Kochi area, I could see white walls, with paragraphs neatly hand-painted over them in black and red. Turns out that Argentine writer Sergio Chejfec is presenting pages from his novel –Baroni, in his tribute to Venezuelan artist Rafaela Baroni, whose work largely remains undocumented.
10) Samooha collective – a bamboo-based architectural installation which displays the nature of life, work and culture in Santhenagar, one of Mumbai’s largest informal communities. Animated with audio, video and large photographic materials, it explores the language, heritage, tradition and habits of the residents.
Each artist brought with them elements from their practice and infused them with inspiration from this setup, to create site-specific installations that offer beauty and wonder. Free from the commercial pressure of having to sell their work, this biennale gives birth to a different kind of artistic expression- which is why it is so important for us to step out of the more familiar museum or gallery spaces and view art in a different context such as this.
Just in case this isn’t already evident, I absolutely loved the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. It was really big and I had not seen anything like this before. Apart from the twelve main venues, there were numerous collaborative and student projects dotted here and there. And with street art in every nook and corner of Fort Kochi, it becomes one big open air art gallery!