ABSTRACT
The Kochi-Muziris Biennale is undoubtedly one of the most important visual arts events in South Asia. Biennales are generally characterized as large-scale exhibitions with a defi ned curatorial process showcasing mostly recent artworks. Additionally, some of the biennales engage in contemporary spatio-economic politics, at times attracting controversies as it was in the case of the biennales of Istanbul 2010 and Sydney 2014, where local and national politics came into confl ict with the staging of the artworks. As Geeta Kapur (2012: 160-173) notes in her article ‘Curating across Agnostic Worlds’, in the last two decades, ‘there has been an enormous proliferation of the biennale phenomenon in the south and in the east.’ And the ripples of this phenomenon have reached the shores of the tiny port city of Kochi situated on the west coast of the Indian peninsula. Yet the eventuation of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale might not be as incidental as it seems to be. The social responsiveness of the artist communities does refl ect on the broad canvas of the biennale phenomenon in many ways, but the climate that enables such large-scale exhibitions is often left untold. A chronological examination of art and arts discourse in India over the twentieth century may actually reveal that the production of India’s fi rst-ever Biennale goes far beyond mere global artistic vogue and preoccupations. There are a series of factors, not all related to the art world, that seem to have created the premise for such a global event as the Kochi-Muziris Biennale.
