ABSTRACT
In early 2012 I fi rst became aware of the development of a forthcoming biennale in India through a series of conversations with V. Sunil, one of the trustees of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, as we discussed the diffi culties and complexity in India of getting the level and scale of art event off the ground. The idea of this proposed Indian biennale caught my imagination both because of the issues raised here in these conversations connected with a global discourse on the biennale format and also because of the national complications of a disparate situation for Indian contemporary art and artists across such an expansive country. It seemed a brave pursuit when you considered the complexity of the situation with the need to navigate between confl icting local and national politics, a divided and fragmented arts scene and the fi nancial backing needed to develop an event of this nature with the symbolic capital that launching India’s fi rst biennale might encompass. It was also seen as questionable that the premise for this biennale was based on the ambitions of two Indian artists without the apparent experience needed in launching an international facing art event, let alone without the necessary conditions needed to support an event of this ambition in a small city like Kochi outside of the nationally recognised cities as India’s destination for its fi rst biennale. Portentously I wrote about this impending event and its potential in a publication I was working on at the time, weaving together the few details of this biennale into a fi nal chapter titled, ‘Outside Art: Art, Location and Global Tensions’. Here I speculated on the possibility of this latest addition to the global biennale format by considering the pronouncements of the curatorial note and positioning that the artist-cum-curators had published on the biennale’s website prior to its launch:
I have here considered the motivations behind contemporary artists’ concerns to look beyond the production of artworks towards ideas connecting art with society and everyday life. The new
Kochi-Muziris Biennale, launching in Kochi in 2012, heralds a return to a significant international engagement for India. . . This biennale has set out its international outlook: ‘[t]hrough the celebration of contemporary art from around the world. . . invoke the historic cosmopolitan legacy of the modern metropolis of Kochi, and its mythical predecessor, the ancient port of Muziris’. . . this event might be a key opportunity in India . . . to connect internationally on home ground and help banish predisposed ideas of India and its art while bringing artists, curators, critics and collectors to India to experience India and its art from the ‘inside’.
