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The second edition of India’s art biennale, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, will begin in the Kerala port city on December 12 featuring 94 artists from 30 countries. |
Mumbai-based Jitish Kallat is curator of the new edition named Whorled Explorations while Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu, the founder-curators of the 2012 show, will remain as chief organisers of the event at multiple venues.
The 108-day “Whorled Explorations” will also be accompanied by a four-month cultural shows of some 650 traditional performers at 10 venues and a series of talks and seminars conceived by the Kochi Biennale Foundation, besides a parallel ‘Student’s Biennale’.
The Student’s Biennale opening on December 13, will feature works of students from government-run art colleges across India led by young curators accompanied by performances, collateral events, interactive projects and films.
Addressing a news conference in Kochi, Komu and Kallat said the performing-arts festival will showcase the country’s rich heritage across region and centuries, collaborating with 25 cultural groups.
“An array of theatre, dance, music, percussion and literary programmes cutting across different cultural aesthetics of India’s south and north from ancient to medieval to modern times will unveil from next week,” they said.
The venues are identified in Ernakulam and adjoining Thrissur district that trace a cultural commonality to the long-lost port of Muziris which currently borders them and the modern port city of Kochi which also sports its rich heritage.
The cultural segment will begin with an innovatively conceived thayambaka ensemble and dish out a string of art forms ranging from classical to folk to contemporary across central Kerala, North Malabar, Canara and eastern India before culminating in end-March with a theatre festival.
They include Kathakali, Nangiarkoothu, Chavittu Natakam, ghazals and a Mappila Festival from Kerala besides Yakshagana of Karnataka and Chhau dance from Jharkhand — in 10 venues, said performing-arts fete curator ‘Keli’ Ramachandran.
A special interactive sequence titled ‘A Day with the Artist’ will feature both veterans and prodigies in the respective fields.
Thrissur-born K Ramachandran, who has been running the ‘Keli’ cultural forum in Mumbai for the past quarter century, said his curation sought to ensure that the upcoming festival presented the essence of each art-form.
“Today’s art world often faces dilution in the name of improvisation and fine-tuning.
KMB’s cultural segment is a strong check to this trend,” he said.
Komu, who is KMB’s director of programmes, said the cultural segment this time highlighted festivals as a mirror to tradition than showcasing individual artistry which was the chief feature of a similar endeavour in the 2012 edition of the biennale.
“No other biennales of the world give prominence to performing arts as we do at the Kochi-Muziris,” he said.
Kallat said the locals and visitors to the biennale could engage with it through a variety of cultural and intellectual platforms beyond the central ‘Whorled Explorations’ exhibition he has curated.
“While the cultural segment adds to their reaching out, the shows also ensure reinterpretation of traditional arts in a contemporary context,” he said.
Works of artists have started coming in from different parts of India and abroad. They include Franceso Clemente, Anish Kapoor, Christian Waldvogel, KG Subramanyan, Sudhir Patwardhan, Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh, Adrian Paci, Andrew Ananda Voogel, Wan Lai-Kuen, Aram Saroyan, Christian Waldvogel, Daniel Boyd, David Horvitz, Dinh Q Lê, Shahpour Pouyan, Shumon Ahmed, Sissel Tolaas, Theo Eshetu, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, William Kentridge, Wim Delvoye, Xu Bing, Yang Zhenzhong and Yoko Ono.
The patrons include Sultan Sooud al-Qassemi, TV Narayanan Kutty, John Abraham, Galfar P Mohamed Ali, Kris Gopalakrishnan, Anju Shah, Feroze and Mohit Gujral, Geeta Kapur and Vivan Sundaram, Priya Paul, Rami Farook, Sangita Jindal, Sunita and Vijay Choraria, Aarti and Amit Lohia, Kalpana Shah, Nicoletta Fiorucci and Pheroza Godrej.
The maiden biennale received roughly 400,000 footfalls. The visitors included John Abraham and Mammootty, besides a host of filmmakers, stars and entrepreneurs.
The organizers expect the number of visitors to touch a million.
