5,000 visit main Aspinwall venue on holiday
Kochi, Dec 14: A vibrant Sunday crowd marked
more than 5,000 footfalls at Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB), where celebrities
from the field of sports, literature and art joined visitors at the main
Aspinwall House which also hosted a day-long seminar and set start to a 100-day
film festival.
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| Ajay Jadeja viewing Lavanya Mani's work at Aspinwall House |
Former cricketer Ajay Jadeja took a round of the
69 exhibits at Fort Kochi’s colonial Aspinwall complex, while a furlong away
internationally-acclaimed writer Jeet Thayil came up with a contemporary music
recital in the Cabral Yard site that houses a work by Malayali artist Valsan Koorma
Kollery.
Jamnagar-born Jadeja, who has one branch of his
family in Kerala, said KMB possessed a cutting-edge quality which was essential
for the art scene in India to flourish in the days to come. “It should be an
eye-opener to many of us,” he shrugged. “And definitely a novel experience to
me.”
Poet-novelist Thayil, 55, sang and played
instruments at an hour-long concert where he was assisted by Suman Sridhar and
Natasha Mendonca on the guitar and keyboard. “These are songs we penned and
composed,” he said about the English ditties the trio presented in the evening.
Veteran Malayali artist ‘Paris’ Viswanadhan,
whose work was a key attraction in the debut biennale, said an open mind
Keralites displayed in ancient days was clear from the state’s history, which
is being portrayed in parts at KMB’14 as well. “The biennale here gives us a
clearer idea of Kerala’s rich past,” he added.
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| Jeet Thayil's music conert at Cabral Yard |
Former Kerala Tourism Director G Harikishore,
who is currently the collector of Pathanamthitta district, spent two-and-a-half
hours at Aspinwall House in Fort Kochi—a suburb that houses all but one of the
eight KMB venues.
A little away, in Mattancherry, Pune-based
Malayali artist P K Nandakumar organised a traditional ‘Kalamezhuthu’ with an
unconventional image. Three artistes led by Baby Kurup from Pattambi in
Palakkad district sketched the ‘Dancing Nataraja’, using natural powders in a
12x10 feet artwork at a room by the Pazhayannur Devi Temple where middle-aged
Nandakumar is working on a collateral project named ‘Land Reformed’, which also
features giving clay-modelling classes to school students.
The Asiya Bai Trust Hall, also in Mattancherry,
became venue for a grand get-together of the prosperous Abad business family in
Kochi but with roots in Kutch province of Gujarat. That was courtesy ‘Ummijaan:
Making Visible a World Within’, which is a three-and-a-half-month-long
exhibition being organised as a partner project of KMB’14.
Another partner project, Cosmology to
Cartography, also began at Heritage Arts gallery in Jew Town. It displays
India’s maps from the 15th to the 19th centuries, making it the first such
project in India.
The locations of Students Biennale (Cosmopolitan
Cult) and Mohammed Ali Warehouse in West Kochi also witnessed big rush of
visitors today.
A two-day international seminar also began at
Aspinwall House’s new Umbrella Pavilion, where speakers today tracked Kochi’s
historical cosmopolitanism.
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