Last week, on invitation by the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB), I landed on the shores of Fort Kochi, that promised land of Instagrammable architectural facades and hipster art cafes, where the maddening heat and heady spice market can be an intoxicating cocktail for the uninitiated. But I’ve been on these lanes before—I'm three KMB editions old, to be precise. In between scrounging for Mallu food (you’ll be surprised how rare it is in the extremely touristy Fort Kochi) and thulping down iced Americanos (from the aforementioned art cafes) to staving off sleep deprivation and lethargy, I walked the familiar—albeit long and arduous—paths from Fort Kochi to Mattancherry, entering sprawling heritage structures that have been converted into temporary art galleries.
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While one must credit the KMB for bringing artistic engagement relegated to wine and cheese affairs within the spiffy white cubes of Delhi and Mumbai, on to the streets of a city that has historically never been a mainstream art centre in India, there is also a larger question of “inclusivity”. The Kochi-Muziris Biennale, since its inception, has made one thing very clear—that this space is inclusive of all art forms, regions, communities and, most importantly, a non-art audience that has always been separated by a chasm of disregard and lack of information on contemporary art. Add to that apathy of the unhealthily narrow art market in the country. (Of course, as I was entered the biennale, I couldn’t but sardonically wonder if the recent #MeToo allegations against biennale co-founder Riyaz Komu and Subodh Gupta, one of the most powerful artists in India, would add to the cynicism. But that’s a conversation for later.)I have spent the last two editions of KMB spewing inordinate ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’, and wildly making up meanings out of thin air, sometimes with strangers who’ve joined in the gasps and nods. I have sat through video projections in dark rooms, sometimes just for the AC. This time around, I observed the biennale with some reticence, weighing in on the heaviness of the theme, 'Possibilities For a Non-Alienated Life', by the foundation’s first female and queer curator, Anita Dube. And, boy, was it heavy.
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Call it a jadedness acquired from my years of gallery-hopping experience and that familiar “artsy” crowd—easy to spot in their conspicuous, anti-fit cottons, doling out haiku Instagram feeds and channelling the weary detachment of a hipster hermit—but my reticence was also met with one question: Can a non-art person enjoy something like this? (An overwhelming response by non-art friends to my biennale Instagram stories suggested otherwise.)In an attempt to be inclusive of this dazed and confused demographic—one that will wonder why a whirlpool in a hole in the ground, which took the painstaking efforts of 50 labourers, is described as “sublime”, or why a clothesline in the backyard of a venue is an art installation—I took some help from the comics collective, Brainded India, who have been frequenting the biennale too, to bring out a (somewhat) definitive guide for the art ignoramus to attending and, most importantly, surviving the biennale. Here goes:
Bi-naa-lay? Bi-annual? How do you pronounce it?
When the KMB was announced in 2012, I admit fumbling with the word until a former senior colleague corrected me. Since then, I’ve been correcting others, without being an asshole about it, of course. It’s an Italian word, after all, and doesn’t warrant a haughty “It’s bee-yay-naah-lay, you pleb” from an Indian.Biennially, or once in two years. Additionally, the KMB here closely references the Venice Biennale, which is kind of the OG in the international art scene and was the first one to introduce the “biennale module”, which translates to taking art out of its box and placing it in a new context. This will explain a lot of, what you may call, “imports” on the pristine Kochi soils. Don’t @ them.
What does a biennale mean?
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Should I read up on art to understand it?
What should I wear for the biennale?
How do I interact with the art?
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