ABSTRACT
During my visit to the opening of the second Kochi-Muziris Biennale, in December 2014, I was drawn to several conversations about the status of the event as an Indian Biennale. In short, I noted an oscillation in how the identity of the Biennale is portrayed: a tendency for it to be considered both India’s Biennale (as in hosting an international event) and an Indian Biennale (as a means of national representation). At stake are differing articulations of local, national, regional, and global identity. Arguably the differing faces of the Biennale simply reveal a pragmatism, a knowingness of what it is to in state an administration of art within a particular context (see Chapter 3 ). I was made aware, for example, of concerns as to how the new national government might alter the dynamics in which the Kochi Biennale Foundation had been founded. Crucially, there is a consideration for a biennale, as a local, national and international event, both to represent the area in which it is held and to be a site for many others to arrive to. There is also a prevailing rhetoric of a ‘people’s biennale’ that surrounds the Kochi Biennale, and which forms the main focus or pivot for this chapter.
