3rd Kochi-Muziris Biennale

Abstract

KOCHI, INDIA DECEMBER 12,2016-MARCH 29, 2017 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] With exhibitions spanning twelve venues and showing work by over one hundred regional and international artists, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale is deservedly recognized as "the largest platform for visual arts engagement in Southeast Asia." (1) Artist Sudarshan Shetty curated the Biennale (his first curatorial project) and has sensitively and adroitly selected and positioned a compelling array of contemporary work across a wide variety of media, including painting, sculpture, video art, sound art, and performance art. According to Shetty, the Biennale--subtitled "Forming in the Pupil of an Eye--"is an assembly and layering of multiple realities" that offers the possibility for connections between the spaces of "immediate experience" and "multiple other consciousnesses." (2) This approach seems appropriate for the first and only biennial held in India, a country long associated with spiritual and meditative practices intended to facilitate such bridging of reality with higher consciousness. Aspinwall House, a sprawling sea-front compound that was originally the headquarters of a nineteenth-century English trading company, is the venue for the majority of the works in the Biennale and the location where most visitors will begin their experience of the event. A number of the artists represented at Aspinwall House have created works that respond to the site's historical associations and its orientation toward the fishing and shipping harbors of Kochi. The placement of Camille Norment's haptic sound installation Prime (2016) offers a particularly compelling example of this synergy. This deceptively simple piece consists of five wooden benches placed in a large, empty warehouse space with a view onto a pier jutting into the harbor. As visitors enter the room they are enveloped by a low, almost rumbling, chorus of voices--not singing, per se, but chanting and moaning, creating a sound that ebbs and flows like the water outside. When one sits on a bench, the experience of the work is completed as the voices' vibrations are transmitted through one's body, engaging the viewer physically with the hypnotic tones. The work becomes meditative, the viewer at one with the sound, the water, and the sensation. Another work that engages the sea-front location of Aspinwall House and its historical association with trade routes through both placement and content is Pedro Gomez-Egana's Aphelion (2016). This mixed-media installation is also placed in a room facing the harbor; yet rather than offering an immediate view of the water, as viewers enter and take their seats an attendant draws the curtains across the windows and turns out the lights, plunging the room into complete blackness. Slowly, a circular image is projected that morphs into sun and moon and appears and disappears in lapping waves. The soundtrack for the work speaks, in a low, rhythmic voice, of ships and water and sea. The voice intones, sometimes metaphorically, sometimes poetically ("salt waters, silt waters, mud waters"), and sometimes with references to warships and other vessels linked to both history and myth. Toward the end of the presentation, a roll of paper extending toward the audience begins to ripple and move. At the same time, the narrative compares the water to a snake, describing a connection between the waves of the sea and the wavelike movement of a snake, which is visually echoed by the rippling paper. As the presentation ends, the doors are flung open and light fills the room. Other installations at Aspinwall House are less connected to the particular location and history of the venue, but nonetheless reference mythology and landscape in ways that reflect the Biennale theme of connecting lived experience with other realities. Chittrovanu Mazumdar's large-scale sculpture and video installation, River of Ideas (2016), draws on the river of Hades as well as the Ganges to reflect on the role of rivers as spaces of journey, of immersion, and of transition, to create an environment that encourages the viewer to move beyond physical experience and to connect that experience to abstract thoughts and reflections. …