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Kochi-Muziris Biennale is coming back after a year-long delay. But will it redeem itself after a chaotic last edition?
Kochi Biennale Foundation president Bose Krishnamachari and the new edition's curator Nikhil Chopra believe they can return to success.
On an unusually warm November afternoon 13 years ago, Kerala's heritage town of Fort Kochi was in the throes of uncertainty. The air was filled with heightened anticipation of the fate of India's first art biennale, even before it had begun.
A cabinet meeting of the state government was in progress in capital Thiruvananthapuram on November 29, 2012. One of the items on the agenda was a decision on the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, under fire for alleged irregularities in the spending of huge public funds given for its forthcoming first edition. The inauguration of the biennale was scheduled for December 12, 2012.
The news of the cabinet decision would soon reach Fort Kochi. The then chief minister Oommen Chandy and his cabinet colleagues had decided to allow the biennale to go ahead, albeit with conditions. There would be a vigilance inquiry into the financial irregularities. The government also decided to back the biennale, overruling a recommendation of the finance department to blacklist the Kochi Biennale Foundation, the newly-formed organisers of the art festival.
More than a decade later, the ghosts of uncertainty marking the biennale's beginnings have returned, casting a long shadow over the new edition to be inaugurated on December 12 this year after an unprecedented chaos at the 2022 event and a no-show two years later. The biennale's sixth edition will be held from December 12 to March 31 next year.
Art under the lens
The eyes of the art world are on India's first biennale after its meteoric rise as a global brand and a major meltdown in its last edition. The story of the biennale's rise and fall is a sentiment built on pride and hurt. With its hugely successful early editions the biennale endeared itself to both the global artistic community and the larger domestic and international audience gaining public trust and ownership.
The site-specific art installations at the biennale's Fort Kochi venues -- almost all of them centuries-old former spice warehouses -- helped give Indian art a new, popular global brand. For example, the late artist Vivan Sundaram's Black Gold, a sprawling installation at the Aspinwall House main venue on the waterfront in the inaugural edition in 2012 brought the past and present together through an artificial deluge of a miniature city created from the remnants of the nearby millennia-old Muziris port town that had spice trade with the rest of the world.
Sundaram shot the deluge using several cameras to create a visual spectacle rooted in the physical installation, reflecting the new standards of aesthetics and language in Indian art. Black Gold and other artworks made whole families pour into the biennale venues to view art. Then came the fall in 2022.
What all went wrong
After losing an entire edition in 2020 to the coronavirus pandemic, the biennale's fifth edition became a canvas of chaos when its opening in 2022 was postponed by nearly two weeks at the last minute because the artworks were not ready. To make matters worse, the organisers went ahead with a previously scheduled formal inauguration by chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, which was boycotted by most of the artists, who criticised an opening without their works being available to the public.
The boycott was followed by an open letter by more than 50 participating artists, which cited "organisational and systemic" failure and sought radical transformation of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale as "an event and institution". The artists said they were overwhelmed by many problems such as shipments delayed in transit and at customs past the opening day, rain leaking into all the exhibition spaces impacting equipment and artworks, a lack of steady electrical power, shortage of equipment and insufficient workforce on all production teams.
"The day before the scheduled opening, less than ten percent of the exhibition was ready,” the artists wrote in the open letter, adding they were drawn into daily struggles with the biennale management whose "organisational shortcomings and lack of transparency had made a timely and graceful opening impossible long before it was postponed”.
What will be different
The chaos pulverised the biennale as an institution, forcing the Kochi Biennale Foundation to postpone the next edition in 2024. The sixth edition, which will open on December 12 and continue until March 31 next year, will have to get its act right. It essentially means providing the participating artists the right working conditions from the selection to the closing, having the venues ready, getting the production process near perfect, and full participation of the audience from the first day.
The biennale foundation and the new curator, the well-respected artist Nikhil Chopra, are exuding confidence they can get the biennale back to business. "It is going to be a challenge, but it is going to be a fantastic edition. That is the feeling everybody has," says artist and Kochi Biennale Foundation president Bose Krishnamachari. "Selected artists have already started site visits to get to know the landscape," he adds.
The selection of participating artists, Chopra says, is complete. "The selection has been completed, but we are not going to announce anything until we have artists' signatures and biennale signatures on contracts. Everyone needs to be protected, the artists, of course, first, and also the biennale," he adds. The names of the participating artists will be announced in October.
The number of participating artists will be fewer than the previous edition's figure of nearly 90. "The number will be circling in the range of 65-66, half Indian and half foreign, including ten artists from Kerala," says Chopra, a Goa-based artist and participant at the second edition of the biennale in 2014.
There will be fresh thinking on the management of venues. And there will be new venues this year. "We are not taking any risks," says Chopra, the founder of HH Art Spaces based in North Goa, which is also part of the curatorial venture of this year's biennale. "We are all very clear that at this stage we are only going to go with what we have hundred percent sure of. This is why we have taken the executive decision to stop the pursuit of getting the other half or other two-thirds of the Aspinwall House, which is owned by DLF (the other half is owned by the Kerala government). We don't want to get into this negotiation with them and then get excited about something that we may have and then find ourselves at a crucial moment and realise we don't have," he adds. "That will be devastating."
"The people who have the memory of the biennale, the Aspinwall House, the freedom with which art and people moved through those spaces, there is going to be a little bit of emotional adjustment," he explains. "But there is no dearth of amazing venues in Fort Kochi. The Anand Warehouse (venue of the previous, parallel Students' Biennale editions in nearby Mattancherry) is incredibly beautiful. We also picked a couple of old, stunning warehouses as well," adds Chopra. "I think we are in a good position as far as the venues are concerned. We are using venues that have never been used by the biennale before, so that is going to be exciting."
Unlike past curators, Chopra hasn't travelled internationally for the selection of artists. "It is also because of ecological reasons. I don't want to be on a plane unnecessarily. So what we have done is, in fact, using that money to put me on a plane to send me to Brussels or North Africa or Congo, I have requested the biennale to use that fund to bring the artists to us for site visits. The second thing, the money is used for travel within India, to go to the artists here and find obscure practices, people who have been working in their studios, without recognition, funding and resources, making smashing works," he says. "I really use this opportunity to get into the grassroots of the Indian contemporary art scene and bring practices into the forefront from Baroda, Ahmedabad, Santiniketan, Kolkata, Delhi, Patiala..."
Learning from the past
The concerns and questions raised about the conduct of the biennale are not weighing down the new edition. "That is history," says Chopra, "I am pondering from the past and learning from it certainly. I am relying on the experience we have as an organisation (HH Art Spaces), the experience Kochi has as an organisation. The whole experience and the project has to begin with respect, absolute 100 percent respect and trust. I am relying on my history with the biennale, on the successes of the biennale as much as the failures."
"I am not in a state of denial, but if we start to wallow in that, what of the previous iteration went wrong, of course, we are very well aware of what went wrong in the previous biennale. The biennale has had an existential moment and has done a lot of thinking for itself, thinking that I don't need to do for it. That was one of my conditions before I said yes (to the offer of Curator). How has the biennale kind of revamped its understanding of what it needs to put together in an international scale of exhibition, it has come back to me with an organogram --- there is a CEO, a GM, and the office staff is full of really bright people. Shyam Patel, the producer of the second and third biennale is back and I have his undivided attention," says Chopra. "I am only going with a sense of confidence, this biennale needs that."
"I am keeping my eye on a few things: the opening date, budget, communication with the artists, they have to be seamless, making sure everything has a paper trail and contracts being signed for the first time with artists. I am very aware of how money is coming to us and how fast that is being executed."
Krishnamachari says there are nearly 20 staff members currently working the biennale office and the number is going to be "400-500 soon". "We are also meeting experienced people who are well connected, can support the biennale and become "ambassadors of art", he adds.
What visitors can expect
"Our biennale is about demystifying art and the artistic experience. It is really about connecting. It is really important that we don't alienate people and don't shroud art in the mystery of artistic jargon and make it academic beyond the understanding of the people. We want to invite people in and give them this feeling of having an embodied experience," says Chopra.
The title of the sixth edition is For The Time Being", a curatorial vision that seeks to "learn from the complexities of human history, choosing to confront the contradictions and fragilities of our present". Says Chopra, "It is like realising that in this fractured, fragile and fraught world we live in, love and solidarity is what is needed to carry ourselves through with our ideas and passion."
