Introduction

This book began life as an essay, ‘The Indian Biennale Effect’ (D’Souza, 2013), which was published in the journal Cultural Politics towards the end of 2013 – less than a year on from the inaugural Kochi-Muziris Biennale in India’s west coast port of Kochi, in the state of Kerala. As the journal’s strapline puts it, Cultural Politics ‘explores precisely what is cultural about politics and what is political about culture’. Alongside photographic documentation, the essay provided a historical and political contextual account of the inauguration of the Biennale 1 and its ‘effects’ – which could be understood in terms of its impact on and relationship to the local and regional economy; the identity of Kochi as a locality for inhabitants, tourists and traders; the recent history of radical political modernization; the turn towards a new internationalism through the liberalization of markets and the rise of India’s contemporary art scene (in the metropolitan centres of Mumbai and Dehli); and the growing critical discourse about a globalized biennale culture or phenomenon as considered by scholars, critics and curators.