Ways to conserve heritage knowledge gains focus at Biennale collateral

Two-month show features images of solutions to ecological challenges

Kochi, Jan 14: Tucked in an open little space inside a bustling market selling ethnic items, Tricia Van Eck and her team have come up with a unique show of images and objects that highlight ways to conserve heritage—one idea which is also integral to the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB).

The ongoing two-month project, which the American has curated along with two others, contrasts the general sights of the historical Jew Town in West Kochi with an organic garden that lines up photographs, drawings, diagrams, artists’ books and pamphlets which focus on how communities around the world are redefining their critical needs and devising solutions for long-term sustainability of nature.

Thus, ‘Rooting (India): The Knowledge Project’ connects art, food and ecology through projects by artists, activists and farmers from primarily India and the United States, says Chicago-based Tricia who has conceived the KMB’14 collateral along with Delhi-based artist-activist Akshay Raj Rathore Singh and American Deborah Boardman. The images depict nearly three dozen works.

“Here we make no complaints; no statements even. We essentially present instances of solutions to ecological, social and economic challenges faced by farmers and consumers across the globe,” says Tricia, standing in the midst of potted plants and printed images on display around visitors sipping organic tea served at the Garden of Yousuf Art Gallery in Mattancherry, not far from the main venues of KMB’14 in Fort Kochi.

“Here we actually encourage casual conversations,” adds Tricia, who runs the 6018 North Gallery in Chicago, a city where she worked for 13 years as assistant curator Museum of Contemporary Art. “We have created a meeting space to connect, discuss, and discover potential solutions to ecological, social, and economic challenges faced by farmers form South Asia and USA.”

The KMB’14 Knowledge Project, which will be on till February 12, not just employs organic farming in the precincts; it even hands out seeds of foodgrains, vegetables and fruits to the visitors. “In the book provided, please write your name, email, and where you will plant,” adds Tricia.

Besides books for reference, there is a relief-surface table which can yield images by placing on it a paper and colouring it with the pencils provided. “You are encouraged to make a rubbing,” says Tricia about the work titled Table of Contents: Genesis. The group allied with the food magazine Forager Collective has carved agricultural images and scenes of farming from Indian rupee notes onto the table to question how food is valued.

As of now, the organic garden of vegetable plants — tomatoes, ladyfingers, chilli peppers and spinach — are grown from the seeds of septuagenarian Kochi resident Tecady Matthew Varghese, a farmer in his younger days.

As for the visuals around, the first in the series is interesting. The image shows Milkweed Dispersal Balloons, filled with milkweed seeds, the only plants on which monarch caterpillars feed. Chicago-based environmental activist Jenny Kendler’s work offers a simple solution to the plummeting monarch butterfly population, since protecting and planting milkweed is the first step in helping monarchs.

Many of the projects here question knowledge and how it may separate us from nature. For instance, one by Manish Jain from Shikshantar, an Udaipur-headquartered organization that challenges contemporary modes of thinking that devalue traditional knowledge and historical traditions, shows how employing cow dung can in fact be a good input to make facials.

Down south of that Rajasthan city, in Hyderabad, Madhu Reddy has transformed her ancestral farm Aiyor Bai into a holistic farm. As a photographer, she takes pictures and posts to Facebook to share the techniques and knowledge she is acquiring since the farm no longer ploughs the fields but uses ancient ecological techniques such as mixed crop planting, seed saving, composting and mulching to create a more holistic partnership of land and man.

Again in peninsular India, contemporary artist Arunkumar H G’s map is of his family farm located in the Sahyadri range of Western Ghats. The 46-year-old Kannadiga is working to restore the biodiversity around the farmland, which is being transformed into rubber plantations and monoculture cash crops. He is developing the Centre for Environment and Art to foster his own and his neighbouring farmers’ rediscovery of sustainable life and farming practices.

A work by Ruchika Negi and Amit Mahanti looks at the politics of food aid, malnutrition and hunger by interrogating the food aid industry through one of its most common symbols: the fortified biscuit.

Londoner artist Stuart Roweth’s Bee Gym is designed to sit on the wire mesh floor of a modern beehive. It provides in-hive solution to bee colony collapse, conceived as a set of four different-shaped devices that allow bees to scrape Varroa mites or parasites off their bodies and out of the hive.

Kate Daughdrill’s Burnside Farm is an urban community farm in Detroit, which is gardened for sustenance, community, and beauty. Half of the farm is cultivated as a garden; the other half is a gathering space and environment of living sculpture. During the growing season, the Burnside neighbours host Sunday dinners in and from the garden.

Tromsø – A City as a Garden looks at a Norwegian city as a garden, where nothing is wasted. Because of Tromsø’s high cost of food, students “harvested” food from dumpsters.

Also, a poster by horticulture consultant Nance Klehm’s highlights how weeds can be turned into food.