3rd Kochi-Muziris Biennale

Abstract

KOCHI, INDIA DECEMBER 12,2016-MARCH 29, 2017 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] With exhibitions spanning twelve venues and showing work by over one hundred regional and international artists, Kochi-Muziris Biennale is deservedly recognized as the largest platform for visual arts engagement in Southeast Asia. (1) Artist Sudarshan Shetty curated Biennale (his first curatorial project) and has sensitively and adroitly selected and positioned a compelling array of contemporary work across a wide variety of media, including painting, sculpture, video art, sound art, and performance art. According to Shetty, Biennale--subtitled Forming in Pupil of an Eye--is an assembly and layering of realities that offers possibility for connections between spaces of and multiple other consciousnesses. (2) This approach seems appropriate for first and only biennial held in India, a country long associated with spiritual and meditative practices intended to facilitate such bridging of reality with higher consciousness. Aspinwall House, a sprawling sea-front compound that was originally headquarters of a nineteenth-century English trading company, is venue for majority of works in Biennale and location where most visitors will begin their experience of event. A number of artists represented at Aspinwall House have created works that respond to site's historical associations and its orientation toward fishing and shipping harbors of Kochi. The placement of Camille Norment's haptic sound installation Prime (2016) offers a particularly compelling example of this synergy. This deceptively simple piece consists of five wooden benches placed in a large, empty warehouse space with a view onto a pier jutting into harbor. As visitors enter room they are enveloped by a low, almost rumbling, chorus of voices--not singing, per se, but chanting and moaning, creating a sound that ebbs and flows like water outside. When one sits on a bench, experience of work is completed as voices' vibrations are transmitted through one's body, engaging viewer physically with hypnotic tones. The work becomes meditative, viewer at one with sound, water, and sensation. Another work that engages sea-front location of Aspinwall House and its historical association with trade routes through both placement and content is Pedro Gomez-Egana's Aphelion (2016). This mixed-media installation is also placed in a room facing harbor; yet rather than offering an immediate view of water, as viewers enter and take their seats an attendant draws curtains across windows and turns out lights, plunging room into complete blackness. Slowly, a circular image is projected that morphs into sun and moon and appears and disappears in lapping waves. The soundtrack for work speaks, in a low, rhythmic voice, of ships and water and sea. The voice intones, sometimes metaphorically, sometimes poetically (salt waters, silt waters, mud waters), and sometimes with references to warships and other vessels linked to both history and myth. Toward end of presentation, a roll of paper extending toward audience begins to ripple and move. At same time, narrative compares water to a snake, describing a connection between waves of sea and wavelike movement of a snake, which is visually echoed by rippling paper. As presentation ends, doors are flung open and light fills room. Other installations at Aspinwall House are less connected to particular location and history of venue, but nonetheless reference mythology and landscape in ways that reflect Biennale theme of connecting lived experience with other realities. Chittrovanu Mazumdar's large-scale sculpture and video installation, River of Ideas (2016), draws on river of Hades as well as Ganges to reflect on role of rivers as spaces of journey, of immersion, and of transition, to create an environment that encourages viewer to move beyond physical experience and to connect that experience to abstract thoughts and reflections. …