It is meant to be a body. There’s a hand. Two feet. Attached to each other with nothing but a line.The limbs could belong to anyone. In the mixed media installation, titled The Politics of Skin and Movement by Mumbai-based artist Amol K Patil, they belong to the bodies of those othered by society. A commentary on caste-based segregation, the work questions the existence of freedom of mobility for marginalised communities.
The work embodies the spirit of the ongoing fifth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale themed ‘In Our Veins Flow Ink and Fire’. Curated by Singapore-based writer-artist Shubigi Rao, it features works by 90 artists from across the world.“The title, which has been borrowed from one of my previous drawings, speaks of the human desire to create and express, and also of the warring impulse to silence and destroy.
I wanted to demonstrate how the forces of repression and mechanisms of silencing can be countered with community action, be it storytelling, songs or strategies that embody the subversiveness of humour and satire,” she says.
Take, for instance, Vietnamese artist Thao Nguyen-Phan’s work, Solar Noon. At the heart of her practice is the Mekong river, which has been mindlessly mined for sand, leading to droughts and floods in the region. Her work draws attention to the cost of modernity by using the image of Brise Soleil—a common feature in Southeast Asian architecture to deflect sunlight. She reproduces these “concrete sunshades” on delicate silk cloth as a call for “a gentler modernity that respects the poetry and lyrics of indigenous knowledge and our ecosystem”.
The symbiosis between humankind and ecology is also at the centre of Treibor Mawlong’s practice. The Transformer, a woodcut work by the Meghalaya-born artist, showcases a group of men climbing down a steep slope carrying a load on their shoulders. The work is part of Mawlong’s documentation of the way of life in his village Mawbri, which lies south-west of Khasi hills in the state.
Home to about 50 households, the village thrives in a bubble of its own, rarely disturbed by the outside world. They work in plantations, growing and harvesting bay leaf, long pepper, orange and areca nut, all of which make it to Mawlong’s drawing board. The artist uses the narrative style of comic books to talk about the people of Mawbri, who continue to preserve the sanctity of their bond with nature, making the life unique to a community in the Northeast resonate with those far away.
“Often when artists work within their communities, they speak about the issues faced by their people, regions or countries, but these relate to people from outside as well. We don’t have to come from Peru to understand what an artist from Peru is talking about, and that’s the universality of art––that you can make something regionally particular, but it can be universally understood,” says Rao.
That also holds true for the work of Ukrainian artist Zhanna Kadyrova. In Palianytsia, Kadyrova, who was forced to flee her home in Kyiv during the 2022 Russia-Ukrain war, repurposes river rocks, slices them and places them on a table to look like bread loaves. The installation is titled after the Ukrainian word for hearth-baked bread. It is, however, also a word that separates the “aggressors”, as Russians are unable to pronounce the word correctly—a method that has historically been used to spot Russian spies.
The biennale has always been a community endeavour. In every edition, local volunteers come together to realise the massive show. This time, however, it was more challenging. Originally scheduled to take place in 2020, it faced roadblocks with restricted travel, making it difficult for artists to make site-specific works. It also had many delays, prompting artists to write an open letter about the challenges faced—late shipments, leaking venues, unsteady electrical supply and insufficient workforce.
“When I said yes to curating the biennale, I had wanted to build a community of artists, and I believe it happened. They stayed the course. A number of Indian artists who had finished their installation stayed on and helped me put up the rest of the show. This is solidarity,” Rao says, adding, “This exhibition went up because of an incredible community effort also from the often unacknowledged team of volunteers, production associates, carpenters, painters. This is what I had hoped to demonstrate through the exhibition,but it also happened behind the scenes.”
The Kochi-Muziris Biennale is on till April 10.