On 15 July 2015, the Kochi Biennale Foundation announced that Mumbai-based Sudarshan Shetty would be the artistic director and curator of the third edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale(KMB). The KMB is arguably India’s largest art exhibition and is scheduled to take place in 2016. The first two editions of the biennale were held in 2012 and 2014, and had a combined draw of nearly a million visitors.
Shetty has been working across myriad mediums of art from painting, sculpture and installation to video, sound and performance for over three decades. He has been exhibited at several major galleries in India and the world over including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, and the Tate Modern, London. His art explores sculpture as a fluid medium while turning outward to embrace other mediums, scales and perceptions.
Last month, at an event that was organised by the Trustees of the Kochi Biennale Foundation in Delhi, Shetty spoke with Nikhil Pandi, an intern at The Caravan. During the course of this conversation—that was later conducted over email as well—Pandhi and Shetty discussed his new role, the concept of the biennale, the position of Indian artists at international biennales and the politicisation of art in contemporary India.
Nikhil Pandhi: What is it like to be playing impresario to one of India’s largest art exhibitions?
Sudarshan Shetty: I do not see myself as an impresario. I believe that all the formulations must come from within the practices that will represent the Biennale [KMB]. When I was asked to be the curator [of the Biennale], my first response was to put together a curatorial brief that arose from and reflected the concerns within my own [art] practice. The idea was to have an overarching theme that would include a lot of artists I like and to look for other artists who would come on board. My work didn’t get over there.
I thought there has to be a way of starting conversations with people who are seemingly outside the contemporary art-space, like writers, poets and theatre people. It may not even be necessary to have them represented in the Biennale but the idea is to find pointers to look within the art world through different perspectives. Right now, I am in conversations regarding various aspects of making and dissemination, and what it means to them. Therefore I think we should consider the Biennale as a biennale-in-progress that people become a part of in some way through active conversations. How do we achieve that? All these are still questions that will perhaps be answered in a few months.
NP: Is there a theme for KMB? Who are some of the participating artists?
SS: I’m afraid I can’t tell you any names because we haven’t started with the names yet. I am having conversations with artists, looking at various [art] practices and meeting a lot of people to be able to create a compendium of information about what could become part of this whole idea. Like I said, the theme is something that is open-ended right now. It could include active participation from the audience and how that [can] best be sought. Like, how do you negotiate with the physical spaces available [of the venue] and the length of time of the Biennale as much as what are the philosophical or social expectations of the space of [the] Biennale that is earmarked for contemporary art. Similarly, what [are the] external practices that will be able to negotiate with those spaces. Can the process of negotiation and the processes [themselves] become part of the Biennale? That is something we are looking at right now to be able to talk about a singular theme.
NP: What are some of the challenges you foresee in organising such an event?
SS: The first challenge is to match up to the reputation that the KMB has been able to gather even within the short history of its existence. I think I would be very happy even if I can match up to those standards. Secondly, how do you make it a people’s biennale? It is already one. The challenge, really, is to find ways in which it takes on from its history and allow it to flow a different course.
NP: How much do you see the opportunity to curate this Biennale as part of your own intellectual and aesthetic evolution?
SS: Like I said, it’s an opportunity for me to move out of the limitations of my own practice. Such an opportunity would need many people, different world-views, and it’s going to surely reflect on what I will do in future—after I finish my work with this Biennale. At the moment I’m totally swamped with the Biennale so I haven’t had the time to think of the kind of projects I may work with later.
NP: You grew up and trained in Mumbai and have exhibited your work in London, Vienna, Fukuoka, Tokyo, Milan, Davos and The Hague among others. How will you bring your experiences from these exhibitions to your curatorial experience at KMB?
SS: To start with, I presume that there are limitations in my own work, a limitation in terms of how I operate within my own practice and my own studio. So how do I extend that? This is an opportunity to get out there and start afresh, look at various practices that constantly point at my own limitations that I can see everyday. In every meeting [with artists and other people] another aspect is added to my own way of looking at the world. Having said that, I have always looked for things that are seemingly outside of my practice to inform my work. There has, in some way, always been an effort that will perhaps allow me to sidestep or even extend my own limits as an artist.
NP: What is at stake for India in the Biennale? Is Kochi really a pragmatic effort to help Indian artists gain an international platform?
SS: I think that’s not really the role of the Biennale. However, [the] KMB is an international platform. The role of the Biennale is to create multifarious conversations that will be enduring in the years to come. To create something that will be helpful not only to artists but everyone involved, or to our cultural and social lives at large.
NP: Who is the Biennale for? How have past biennales involved the people of Kochi and how does 2016 aim to do that?
SS: I see the Biennale as something for multiple stakeholders, whether it’s the people of Kochi or the people of India or anywhere else. Not only artists and art related people, but for everyone.
Having [attended] each of the editions of KMB, I can tell you that, there does not need to be much work in bringing people to the Biennale. I have seen busloads of people from neighbouring towns and villages that come and actively engage, [in a way that] I have not seen anywhere else. I have seen them reading every word on the wall and watching long videos with respectful attention. This Biennale is in Kochi, in Kerala, which has a long and a profound relationship with contemporary literature and cinema, and that makes it special.
I think if you look at the history of Kochi itself, it suggests an enormous history of multicultural-cosmopolitanism in the Indian Ocean. I see this Biennale as just a logical extension of that. There will be people coming from across the world. Their works will be in conversation with artists from this region, as well as the people from Kochi and around who come to the Biennale: broadly speaking, this will lead to a three-way conversation that I am trying to work with.
NP: The biennale as a concept has also been used to contest the idea of “global art”. In terms of this history where does the Kochi Biennale situate itself?
SS: That’s a very good question. You’ll have to wait a while for the Biennale to answer that. But I think with each edition [of the KMB] this question has been addressed in very different and meaningful ways. If it’s a biennale in Kochi, or a biennale in India, what form it should take and what approaches it should have, these questions are already being addressed and are continuing to be addressed.
NP: Do you think the KMB is a microcosm of the contemporary Indian art scene? How has the existing art scene in India changed in the past few years?
SS: I think like India, which is so diverse—people talking [in] multiple languages, having a variety of practices—KMB could represent that diversity even within the art practice. So in that sense, it perhaps will mirror that diversity.
As far as the contemporary art-scene in India in concerned, it has changed a lot. There are more exciting younger artists who have been working across mediums. I have had an opportunity to meet a few in the last couple of months. For a lot of them, a world of information is readily accessible today. As oppose[d] to when we were younger we were hungry for information of whatever kind and lot of effort went into gathering rather than erasure, as we do now.
NP: What do you make of the position of Indian artists at international biennales?
SS: I think there are many Indian artists who are international names today. But having said that, there is also a spate of survey-type Indian art-shows particularly in the last ten years, which may not be exactly conducive to a meaningful focus on “Indian art.” That being said, a lot of Indian artists have made a considerable mark in the international arena. Some Indian artists have been showing in various important biennales for a long time now.
NP: Earlier this year the Kochi Biennale held a mass reading of Perumal Murugan’s banned novel to express solidarity with freedom of expression. How can artists play a greater role in the advocacy of free speech issues?
SS: I think as artists, all of us need to use various positions and look into our own practice[s] to see how best we can speak up. It can have an impact in various ways. In fact, the impact is something one shouldn’t be concerned about as long as one can say what one wants to say without fear.
NP: What do you have to say about the politicisation of art in India today?
SS: I think that all art is political. The impact of politics and the political climate does affect art and I think it is the artists’ responsibility to stand up to that and talk about it openly without any fear. Making art is also a position of social responsibility. People in power must understand that individual freedom of expression is a useful tool for a healthy society.
Someone was telling me this morning, that the [National] Crafts Museum [in Delhi] is going to be closed-down in favour of a Hastkala Academy and they have destroyed the building, in the last month, which had a great masterpiece made in the mid 80’s by Gangadevi, a gond artist. This is something we need to talk about and be concerned about as well.
I see that there are a lot of unwelcome changes imposed on cultural institutions in the last year alone. FTII [the Film and Television Institute of India] being the prime example, there are other instances with [the] Crafts Museum or the National Museum, just to name a couple of them. By some ways, through KMB, I hope we can present a position that counters all that is not presently well with our cultural life right now.
This interview has been edited and condensed.