New Delhi, January 30:
After taking the contemporary art world by storm with its first edition
a year ago, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale gave a glimpse of what to expect in the
upcoming edition this December as the organisers of the pioneering festival
launched the much-awaited official catalogue in the national capital.
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| Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh & Chris Dercon |
The 770-page official catalogue of the
first Indian biennale held from December 2012 to March 2013 was released by renowned
Indian artist Ghulammohammed Sheikh, who handed over the first copy to Chris
Dercon, Director of London’s Tate Modern art gallery.
“It was an exceptional and exemplary
biennale,” Sheikh said at a well-attended event on Wednesday evening at the DLF
South Court in New Delhi’s Saket Select City Walk.
The catalogue launch function also saw
the Kochi Biennale Foundation (KBF) presenting its new curator, renowned artist
Jitish Kallat, of its second year beginning on December 12.
“The Kochi Biennale is the ideal spot
to reflect on the world today,” said Kallat, who is tasked with the unenviable
challenge of repeating the huge success of its first edition.
Dercon noted that it was very rare that
the first biennale is a success anywhere in the world. “I am curious about what
the new curator is going to do,” he added. “I believed in the Kochi
Biennale from the very beginning and I also believe in the second edition."
The first Kochi-Muziris Biennale has
also gone online through the collaboration between the Biennale Foundation and
the Google Art Project, which brings museums to people on their mobile phones
and computers.
“This is the first-ever biennale in the
world to be archived digitally,” said Riyas Komu, the event’s co-founder and
co-curator with well-known artist Bose Krishnamachari. “That is a tremendous
technological and technical achievement,” Komu added.
Amit Sood, the head of Google Art
Project, said those who hadn’t gone to the Kochi Biennale could now visit the
whole event from any part of the world. “You can’t replicate the physical
experience, but you can actually walk through the beautiful venues of the
biennale through our work,” he added.
The official biennale catalogue
contains essays by Union Minister of State for Human Resources Development
Shashi Tharoor and art theorist and curator Geeta Kapoor besides details
information and photos of the works of each artist who participated in the
first edition. Co-published with the Kerala-based DC Books in a distribution
collaboration, the biennale catalogue was financially supported by the Nirlon
Foundation Trust, the Mumbai-based leading charitable foundation, and the
National Culture Fund of the Government of India by providing 100 per cent tax
deductions for the donation. The catalogue was also supported by the Ministry
of Culture of the Government of India and the Government of Kerala.
The catalogue, considered a collector’s
item, sums up the values and principles under which the biennale was
conceptualized. It was with the similar spirit of the ancient maritime
explorers that the KBF set out to do India's first biennale, according to the
biennale founders in the book. “The water was uncharted. The vessel untested,”
a senior functionary said. “The wind and waves hostile and surging. And, the
task daunting.”
Among those who spoke at the event included the Biennale Foundation
trustee and former senior Indian Police Service officer Hormis Tharakan besides
Ms Kapoor and Poonam Bhagat Shroff of Nirlon.
The catalogue extensively features the woks of the 89 artists from 23
countries who took part in the inaugural edition of the biennale held in 14
venues and over 300,000 sq ft of exhibition area. The event had three-fourth of
its works that were site-specific.
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