KOCHI:
The Kochi-Muziris Biennale will give this week a peek at the life and work of two leading Indian artists, as films on Kausik Mukhopadhyay and Nilima Sheikh are set to be shown on Monday and Tuesday at a key venue of the festival.
Both the movies are directed by noted cinematographer Avijit Mukul Kishore, and will be screened at the Pavilion in Cabral Yard at Fort Kochi. ‘Squeeze Lime in Your Eye’ (Jan 28) will be followed by ‘The Garden of Forgotten Snow’ the next evening.
Avijit, who is based in Mumbai, works in documentary and interdisciplinary moving-image practices while also being a curator. He also collaborates with visual artists on moving-image-based art projects and is a lecturer in film and media schools.
‘Squeeze Lime in Your Eye’ essays the inimitable Mukhopadhyay and his works that “exist at a peculiar intersection of machine, organism and toy”, says Avijit. “The artist uses discarded household objects to create works that are fragile, humorous and poignant.”
The hour-long film made last year traverses the overlapping spaces of art, invention and pedagogy through Mukopadhyay’s work, following him through his 2017 solo titled ‘Squeeze Lime in Your Eye’ and his practice as a teacher in an architecture school in Mumbai.
‘The Garden of Forgotten Snow’, about septuagenarian Nilima’s art practice and her engagement with Kashmir over decades, traverses “the many layers of memory and history as embodied in her work”, the filmmaker says. The 30-minute work also scans the pertinent literary and art-historical traditions.
Baroda-based Nilima’s work is on at the 108-day biennale that ends on March 29.
