Away from the chorus of highly corporatised art festivals, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale hopes to return after three pandemic-plagued years to its original purpose: to give people their Real The stories, their strength, their songs. This year, it embraces the strategy of storytelling in a myriad of ways: words, visuals, poetry, film, music.
look | Glimpses | Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2022-2023
If there is one thing that has the power to lift a festival mired in administrative wrangles, it is the clean slate of a new ideology – a new story that embraces all our stories.
The curator of this year’s edition is Shubhigi Rao, a writer-artist who recently represented Singapore at La Biennale 2022 with her ‘Pulp’ project. Visiting their work in Venice, I saw layers of important stories reflecting on the community of wordworkers through books, film and paper-labyrinth architecture – an idea-seed of their theme for the Kochi Biennale: ink and fire run through our veins,
Curator Shubigi Rao with Bose Krishnamachari, President, Kochi Biennale Foundation | Photo credit: Kochi-Muziris Biennale
“I realized that I was already assimilating ideas of global diffusion in my curatorial essay for ‘Pulp II’; I also talked about the spread of contagion before the pandemic. This means that apparently I was picking up on things unconsciously, and it was happening all at once. And I really trust that process. I trusted everyone I met. Subliminal signs too. It’s always interesting to hear others talk non-judgmentally about their work and ideas,” she shares. This organic approach focused on patient, intense storytelling in a time of voracious visual cycles and social media overdose .
The biennial, which runs from December 23, 2022 to April 10, 2023, features 90 participating artists and over 40 new commissions at Aspinwall House, Paper House and Ananda Warehouse in Fort Kochi.
Founding of Anne Samat can’t be broken, won’t stay without speaking
, photo credit: special arrangement
a place for untold stories
“When someone is given the opportunity to curate such a large and important biennial, you have the possibility to make things happen. For artists who don’t have galleries, who don’t have representation, who want to make this art can’t take a look at the world that excludes more than it includes. Here was my chance to do something about it. And how do you do that? You find actors who can tell those stories , who tell their own stories, and their stories may be regional or local, but they can be immediately understood and heard by people all over the world. You can remember the people who taught many generations of artists, while Their own careers may have taken a backseat. You can see women with thoughtful practices being sidelined by ostentatious, superficial work and yet still finding ways to thrive and create. The Biennial is not just a collection of artworks, it ways to share the ethos, create and survive, even flourish and expand It could also be about finding voices for the world,” Rao reminds.
untitled, Smita GS’ Vibrant Landscape | photo credit: special arrangement
Consider artists like Gabriel Goliath and Sahil Naik, who use song to speak of loss, destruction of community, feminism; But also as a communal bond in the form of the song ‘U-ra-mi-li project’. Another example is forensic architecture and investigative work by Gabriela Löffel. Form and structure mark time and memory in Sahar Shah’s Notes from a City Unknown. “Over the course of several years, I have written short notes on a city. Unfinished stories through moments of connection and distance,” she says.
Rao explains that when she says, “Storytelling and strategy, it’s strategy as a way of talking about your environment, the things you care about that are very local, but universally understood.” . This is especially the case when you look at issues that affect us globally. How to oppose them, or how to affect change – these are the strategies we need to share”.
house of commons
With voices from places as diverse as Ukraine, Kenya, Norway, Palestine and Guadalupe, the actual storytelling will involve different narratives and plural perspectives within the context of the current socio-political climate. The central idea is still one: solidarity.
Madeeha Ejaz death sentence in two languagesCourtesy Uneja Ejaz | Photo credit: Kochi-Muziris Biennale
And the process is people. “My belief became even stronger that one of the most powerful ways of creating is the way of consciously creating a common. It’s a word overused, but it was the word I looked for, in fact it to examine where power resides with those who are perceived as powerless. Power certainly resides in our thoughts and our actions. And the other thing is satire – when you have no power, those The ability to mock those who have power over you is incredibly powerful.
An example of this is Marta Tumala’s video, FinnCycling-Soumi-Perkele! It satirizes Finland’s politics via a workout video, but actually opts for raps and fiery monologues. Another example is disruptive acts of disruption that challenge dominant techno-solutionist ideologies.
“All over the world, public spaces are being taken over and turned into private or monetized hands. This is a loss of the commons. The commons was not originally just an idea, it was physical space. When I say that If the Biennial is about the commons, I’m talking about the field. The commons is a place where people should be able to generate ideas in their field where they feel safe doing so.”
Zina Saro-Viva holly star boys
, photo credit: special arrangement
It almost seems like a paradoxical platform, given that the “world of art” itself has its faults. Rao doesn’t disagree. “We have really adopted the words of those who have been at the forefront of the struggle. Artspeak takes their work, the art world builds its bones on it, builds a career on it, and drops these discussions when they fall out of favor. It does a terrible disservice to all those who are actually at the forefront of these struggles, like decolonizing, the climate crisis.
blurring all distinctions
The physical and the virtual will not stand as binaries in the biennial. “The fact that we navigate so easily between the two worlds means that they overlap a lot; If you’ve ever daydreamed during a conversation with someone, you’re living in a virtual world. And this predates digital online technology. Art-making is a fantasy world, the biennial is potentially a format of a fantasy world,” Rao reasons.
Equally unimportant are ethnic, racial or nationalistic divisions. “They deny the fact that language, thought and culture have transgressed those boundaries. How can a nation be opposed to these things? National boundaries are also almost always temporary. We need to end this Because this is what causes mistrust, hatred and war.”
Amol K Patil skin and movement politics
, photo credit: special arrangement
fantasy castle
Meanwhile, the rest rooms of Fort Kochi are quietly indulging in the alchemy of art. “When the land does not fall prey to human interference, is overgrown, there are a lot of fauna. I am always impressed by how many beautiful life forms exist among biennials in Kochi. We need to relocate them temporarily Have to do and get out of the house, and then they’re right back in. Think monitor lizards, snakes and an array of fungi and incredible insects.
A cat peeks through Aspinwall House as the main character of Tenzing Dakpa’s photo-work on Memories of Home. “I see the cat as my own. It comes to you when it needs food and tender love, otherwise it’s on its own,” he says.
Aspinwall House | Photo credit: Kochi-Muziris Biennale
There are other animals too. “You’re hyper-concentrating, talking to an artist amidst the noise of construction, and thinking about extra-terrestrial life forms that are completely like flora and fauna [and not human-like at all], and you see a white-bellied sea eagle being trapped overhead by fearless crows. There’s the feeling that you can have this massive, intense human footprint, it’s quite bizarre how we’re scaring our planet so often, but the moment the biennial is over, this wild, wondrous life comes back . I know it looks like it’s an exotic jungle, fantasy orientalist trope. But it’s a whole other life. And most importantly – the whole point of my story – there is such a big world outside of us and our little interests and our little lives, and the art world could do with more of that realization and with its narrowness. That’s my commons.
The senior writer-editor’s practice spans convergent cultures, global literature, the multidisciplinary arts, and social issues.
KMB opening date has been updated.