The multiplicity of visual languages, paired with interpretive wall labels in both languages, gave audiences new ways to understand the formal and political constraints in which artists make their work. Something I really enjoyed about the Biennale is how artists who tend to be categorised in fairly rigid terms in mainstream and largely market-based art contexts - via classifications like emerging/established, contemporary/modern, tribal/folk, North/South, art/craft, and so on - artists from all these categories were seamlessly juxtaposed and interwoven throughout the exhibition spaces. These included Marzia Farhana’s installation using materials scavenged from the Kochi floods, Aryakrishnan’s Sweet Maria Monument, a testament to the strength and power of queer and trans communities in Kerala, and sculptor Shambavi Singh’s reflections on farming and land. It was also a pleasure to consider works that used elements of material culture in installations, engaged with issues that are both local, and with wider global implications. It was also wonderful to see such a dynamic presence of historical works by senior artists - engaging such a robust display of KP Krishnakumar’s ink drawings, Chittaprosad’s drawings and archival materials, and Mrinalini Mukerjee’s water-colours, prints and sculptures together at Durbar Hall - was a personal highlight. The festival’s theme, 'Possibilities for a Non-Alienated Life', summed it up perfectly for me - an acknowledgment of the political fraught times we live in, and an articulation of many possible paths forward that reinvest in the politics behind sociality, and the power of friendship. I was looking forward to seeing works that explore and express feminist critiques, that offer counter narratives and alternative ways of seeing that are often bypassed. The Biennale, as a whole, also takes artists who have had growing visibility in shaping current ideas of the cannon such as of William Kentridge, The Guerilla Girls, Jitish Kallat and Nilima Sheikh, with younger artists, local artists and collectives to present a new formulation of what we would understand as a working artistic cannon that is more inclusive and diverse.ĭetail of a work by Chitra Ganesh at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale I would characterise this moment as framed by a global shift towards autocratic rule that seeks to uphold a dramatic increase in income inequality, support state-based surveillance mechanisms such as corporate internet data mining and biometric data collection, values corporate interests over ecological harmony human life, and in turn, is facing a growing resistance to old-school patriarchal and caste-based norms among others. The works at the Kochi Biennale, taken as a whole in their polymorphous power, converge in a few key ways. First, the collection of installations, interventions, and bodies of work presented, including realms of performance and food, follow a thread that investigates how artists think, create, question and find common ground within an increasingly alienated and polarised contemporary climate. The artist took time off to write about her time at the festival.
Ganesh re-interprets and subverts the representational language used in comics by using queer, multispecies and surrealist imagery, and also opens up traditional narratives of the books by isolating frames, and introducing written poetics to the images that range from eerie, to humourous, to wildly abstract, to poignant.