How Kochi’s history and living traditions shape Nikhil Chopra’s vision for the Kochi-Muziris Biennale
The artist on curating the biennale's 6th edition and putting the body at the centre of all experiences
Performance artist Nikhil Chopra has curated the sixth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (Credit: AJ Joji Photography) Curated by prominent performance artist Nikhil Chopra with Goa-based collective HH Art Spaces, the sixth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, which begins on December 12, features 66 artists/collectives from over 25 countries. Titled “For the Time Being”, the curatorial vision positions the biennale not as a static art showcase but a “living ecosystem” where there is emphasis on process, conversations and site-specific explorations.
Excerpts from an interview with Chopra:
Tell us about your journey from being a participating artist at the 2014 edition of the biennale to curating it this year?
My relationship with the biennale really grew out of my friendship with Bose (Krishnamachari, president of the Kochi Biennale Foundation). He was the maverick of the art world. When I was just beginning my career, he was already taking risks and challenging the system. When the biennale was announced in 2010, my first thought was that this is exactly what the subcontinent needs: a cutting-edge international contemporary art exhibition. India can be an extraordinary ground for artists from across the world to create, exhibit and share. I was first invited to participate in the biennale by Jitish Kallat in 2014, when I performed an over 50-hour piece La Perle Noire: Le Marais, which gave me an incredibly diverse audience. The engagement was not just with Kochi but also its people. The questions that the biennale was asking in Kochi are the same the HH Art Spaces was asking in Goa: How do we create spaces for artists from the world over and initiate edgy interactions? In the last edition, we looked after an ‘Invitations Project’, bringing together 10 performances by artists from the subcontinent and beyond. That felt like a trailer to something bigger and now we are here curating the biennale.
Every biennale also reflects the inherent practice of its artist-curator. This edition will see a lot of performance art. Could you tell us about that?
We can’t aspire to be what we are not and we want to remain honest to ourselves. As a collective, we have always been allied with performances, not exclusively perhaps, but even with the other art practices our lens has been to look at how to place the body at the centre of our inquiry, asking questions such as what emanates from the body to how it is a container of memory, our shelter or even our most vulnerable space. What we want to bring to the biennale is our understanding and relationship to time as a material and how the body is at the centre of all our experiences.
The curatorial note frames Kochi as a historical port city. In what ways will the biennale engage with its past?
There is often a narrative that India lacks resources or access to what the West has and I am cautious about that. In Kochi, the possibilities are immense. We are in a part of the world where we have access to living traditions, ancient wisdom; practices that existed 1,000 years ago are still alive. That, to me, is a resource. I want to shift the paradigm and also focus on the abundance in nature, how culture and agriculture have informed the history of the place. As a port town, Kochi has welcomed travellers, wanderers, traders and has seen goods and bodies move through this land for thousands of years. I don’t want to recognise that in a granular way, but feel it in the vibration of this land.
Compared to the previous editions, the participating artists this year are fewer and Aspinwall House is only partially available. Tell us about some of the new interesting venues.
The number of artists may have reduced but the scale of the biennale has expanded. We’ve crossed the water into Willingdon Island, where we occupy a space the size of an aircraft hangar. New venues include three warehouses in Mattancherry, one of which used to be a marriage hall. These are large, chapel-like spaces that will host monumental works by Norwegian artist Sandra Mujinga and Athens-based Athina Koumparouli.
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