Kochi-Muziris Biennale: Creating friendship economies at the sixth edition

For Mario D’Souza, director of programmes, the Kochi Biennale Foundation and curatorial member of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, this short hiatus allowed the team to seek ways of building a platform that was honest and true to its context and limitations—both financial and infrastructural in south Asia. Featuring the works of 66 artists/collectives and several parallel shows, the 2025 edition (12 December-31 March) moves away from the idea of a biennale as a singular central event and looks at elements that engage in conversations.

Through the mix of projects and works on showcase, the cultural event seeks to challenge the idea of internationalism itself. “Muziris was significant in ancient times when it engaged in trade and cultural exchange with civilisations across the world. Internationalism was created here before colonial ships took to sea. We want to get back to that local context," says D’Souza, who is approaching the biennale as an ecosystem with no central nucleus. The various elements of this edition—ranging from the Biennale exhibitions, collateral events, Students Biennale, Invitations section, and more—unfurl like chapters in a book, one after the other, coexisting and conversing with one another.

The theme, for the time being, looks at the body as a vessel of memory and lived histories. This is an extension of Chopra’s own artistic practice. “The body is at the centre of all experiences—it is our temple, container of inherited attributes," says Chopra. “Every human is a walking archive, a museum, of their entire lives. You carry that around like a house, like a turtle carrying its story on its back. Sometimes it is a burden and at other times a liberation. We want to take cognisance of that."

The new venues, including St Andrew’s Parish Hall, Arthshila, Jail of Freedom Struggle and Water Metro, too embody within them this idea of collective history. The programmes for December include Statues Must Die by Naeem Mohaiemen, and (Towards) Crip Aesthetics: Disability as Method by Resting Museum, which is about crip aesthetics as a mode of resistance to able-bodied and able-minded norms. In the subsequent weeks, the biennale will host a performance by artist Marina Abramović, and South by South—"a confluence of artists, curators, and institutions to explore the intertwined histories of trade, migration, and hybridities across the Indian Ocean".

The Invitations section returns after 2022 to spotlight independent artist-run initiatives such as Alice Yard from Trinidad and Tobago, Brazil’s Bienal das Amazonias, Alkazi Theatre Archives in collaboration with Alkazi Collection of Photography, ruangrupa/Gudskul from Jakarta, and Dar Yusuf Nasri Jacir for Art and Research from Palestine. The last one looks at Palestinian experience of migration and how that movement connected histories across geographies. The project explores loss and recuperation while tracing ideas of memory and absence.

The focus this year is not on the final showcase but the process and practices that have informed the projects. These artistic journeys are reflected in both Edam and the Students Biennale. Co-curated by Aishwarya Suresh, Edam is rooted in the heritage and culture of Kerala, while also looking outwards at other cultures of the world. Bose Krishnamachari, president, Kochi-Muziris Biennale describes it as a “spectrum of ideas and thoughts as perceived by the artists of Kerala". 36 projects by artists like Abin Sreedharan, Devika Sundar, Indu Antony and Josh PS, will be showcased at venues like Cube Art Spaces, Armaan Collective & Cafe and Garden Convention Centre in Bazaar Road.

The Students Biennale, curated by a set of artists and collectives such as Khursheed Ahmed and Salman Bashir, Secular Art Collective, Anga Art Collective, GABAA, and more, has expanded its scope as well with 70 projects, covering 150 art schools across the country. Kashmir-based Khursheed Ahmed and Salman Bashir have curated projects from the northern Himalayan belt, ranging from Ladakh to Uttarakhand. “The gaze on the landscape—complete with its rituals, ecology and community—runs like a thread through the works," he says. For instance, Urgain Zawa from Ladakh explores the relationship between the fragile ecology and the people who dwell on it. He uses earth as a medium to look at both ecological shifts and human touch. In Nothing is Something, Roots of Guilt by Vikas Kumar Roy, who hails from Himachal Pradesh, etchings and performative gestures come together to examine the relationship between societal gaze and self-image. Adil Farooq Malik from University of Kashmir uses mixed media in Remains of a Home to address displacement, land rights, and idea of belonging.

The Invitations section returns after 2022 to spotlight independent artist-run initiatives such as Alice Yard from Trinidad and Tobago, Brazil’s Bienal das Amazonias, Alkazi Theatre Archives in collaboration with Alkazi Collection of Photography, ruangrupa/Gudskul from Jakarta, and Dar Yusuf Nasri Jacir for Art and Research from Palestine. The last one looks at Palestinian experience of migration and how that movement connected histories across geographies. The project explores loss and recuperation while tracing ideas of memory and absence.

The focus this year is not on the final showcase but the process and practices that have informed the projects. These artistic journeys are reflected in both Edam and the Students Biennale. Co-curated by Aishwarya Suresh, Edam is rooted in the heritage and culture of Kerala, while also looking outwards at other cultures of the world. Bose Krishnamachari, president, Kochi-Muziris Biennale describes it as a “spectrum of ideas and thoughts as perceived by the artists of Kerala". 36 projects by artists like Abin Sreedharan, Devika Sundar, Indu Antony and Josh PS, will be showcased at venues like Cube Art Spaces, Armaan Collective & Cafe and Garden Convention Centre in Bazaar Road.

The Students Biennale, curated by a set of artists and collectives such as Khursheed Ahmed and Salman Bashir, Secular Art Collective, Anga Art Collective, GABAA, and more, has expanded its scope as well with 70 projects, covering 150 art schools across the country. Kashmir-based Khursheed Ahmed and Salman Bashir have curated projects from the northern Himalayan belt, ranging from Ladakh to Uttarakhand. “The gaze on the landscape—complete with its rituals, ecology and community—runs like a thread through the works," he says. For instance, Urgain Zawa from Ladakh explores the relationship between the fragile ecology and the people who dwell on it. He uses earth as a medium to look at both ecological shifts and human touch. In Nothing is Something, Roots of Guilt by Vikas Kumar Roy, who hails from Himachal Pradesh, etchings and performative gestures come together to examine the relationship between societal gaze and self-image. Adil Farooq Malik from University of Kashmir uses mixed media in Remains of a Home to address displacement, land rights, and idea of belonging.

With this edition, D’Souza also wants to challenge the static nature of the exhibition. “How do you make an exhibition evolve through its duration? So, this time artworks arrive and depart, existing projects are tended to, thus making way for new forms to emerge," he adds. For instance, Kolkata-based Panjeri Artists’ Union—featuring artists, academics, activists, students and collectives— is creating a dynamic exhibition, which will unfold over three months in parts to discuss the shared lineages between Bengal and Kochi, including labour migration, peasant rebellions, and anti-caste struggles.

This year, in the Invitations section, ruangrupa, the curator of Documenta 15, is bringing excerpts from the OK.Video biannual media arts festival held in Indonesia, which looks at the development of video-based and time-based practices in south Asia. “They have created a setup in a way that different media will play in Kochi and the feedback will be looped back to Jakarta," explains D’Souza. Similarly, Packet from Sri Lanka will be placing a printer in the middle of the room, which will keep printing different forms of haikus that the visitors can rip and take.

A sense of movement will be built into the biennale with performance art taking place at different moments in time. Take, for instance, Mandeep Raikhy’s Hallucinations of an Artifact, in which the artist recontextualises the tribhanga posture of the iconic Dancing Girl bronze figurine from the Indus Valley Civilisation.

Most of the artists are responding to the site in an interdisciplinary manner. Zarina Muhammad’s Observing Omens Drawn by Lightning is one such performance-installation, which brings together text, ritual performance, sound and participatory forces to look at maritime memory across Southeast Asia. Shiraz Bayjoo reframes heritage in Sa Sime Lamer at Aspinwall (Director’s Bungalow) by investigating the influence of Dutch rule and the violence shaping colonial botanical collections. In Time Reclaiming Structures: Birdhouses by Dima Srouji and Piero Tomassoni creates an outdoor installation resembling semi-residential birdhouses, which aim to provide a sanctuary from socio-ecological disasters and challenge authoritarian control over time and existence.

This time around, the curators wanted to build friendship economies, which go beyond the biennale, wherein practitioners not only work with each other but also nourish one another. For Chopra, such conversations around creative synergies started 15 years back when he worked with artists such as Marina Abramović in an immersive setting in Manchester in 2009. That’s when he realised that we never create in isolation but in context. “And the context is always people. As much as the west would like to think of the artist as a singular author, I believe that art can’t be created without partnerships, friendships and the interweaving of various talents, be it in the artist studio, on the street or in the markets," he says. Such collaborative artistic practices give rise to an ecosystem, which has an outward ripple effect starting from the immediate neighbourhood to the entire nation and beyond. Together, HH Arts Spaces and Chopra hope to create a space where different voices come together not just in alignment but also in dissonance.

The sixth edition of the biennale has a reimagined collaterals programme, starting on 14 December and featuring nine institutions/artists with showcases related to the central theme. This time, the exhibitions were selected through an open call. The highlights include surveys of abstractionist Shobha Broota and painter-printmaker Naina Dalal. Especially interesting is Lilies in the Garden of Tomorrow by artist Sarah Chandy, curated by Bakul Patki. It traces five generations of memory “through Eliamma Matthen’s 1938–42 diaries, revealing women’s unseen roles as witnesses, keepers of history, and agents of resistance. Blending archives, letters, artefacts, and new photo-performance works, it reflects on how families hold history, how memory resists power, and how futures are imagined through remembrance," states the artist note. Another collateral project, Durga Puja Art: the living museum of Bengal’s public art, presented by massArt features site-responsive pavilions that link the two port cities of Kolkata and Kochi.

Just like Lilies in the Garden, another project, Emperor’s New Clothes by Monsoon Culture links the personal with the political. Led by Kochi-based Aswin Prakash, Monsoon Culture was envisioned as a long-term research programme in response to the rapidly changing ecological and sociocultural landscape of Kerala, which has now evolved into a platform of sorts.

“Monsoon Culture functions as both a platform and a process — bringing together artists, artisans, activists, historians and designers to reinterpret Kerala’s cultural memory through exhibitions, installations, and collaborations," states Aswin in his curatorial note. Hailing from a family of coir artisans from coastal Kerala, he was deeply sensitive towards labour, materiality and dignity. When Aswin moved to Delhi, where he lived for seven years, he ended up feeling discontented and disillusioned, thinking of home, belonging and identity. “I never felt I would ever get to highlight such conversations. I am yet to accept the fact that I am curating an exhibition around it," says Aswin. Through Emperor’s New Clothes, he also wants to break the bubble that Malayalis often live in, without acknowledging the many influences on their history.

Through photos, performance and installations by a set of artists, designers, activists, craftspersons and historians, the exhibition is questioning “how identity and value are constructed through material and image". In Aswin’s view, clothing has deep metaphorical meanings here—it could be used to expose authority, act as layers in between or become a force of confrontation. This collateral project will acquire a dynamic feel through the duration of the biennale with gatherings, performances and sound interventions. “As of now it features projects like The Malayali Album by Vinil Paul, which reveal our political contours. Roland and Sabrina Michaud’s photographs actively re-member and re-cognize lives from outside the margins into the frames. Artists like Rini Alphonsa Joseph, Amith K, and Bhavani Kunjulakshmi recast visual traditions and religious symbols through Dalit, queer, and syncretic frameworks, reclaiming the soft power of memory," states Aswin’s note.