KBF: Framing the Kochi-Muziris Biennale

MUMBAI:
A catalogue of the works presented by eminent artist Jitish Kallat over his curatorship of the second edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB) in 2014 will be released here on Thursday (October 27).
The publication, which takes its title, ‘Whorled Explorations’, from KMB 2014, captures the entire corpus of artworks from across styles and forms as created by 94 participating artists and showcased at eight venues over the 108-day convergence of art and dialogue in Kochi.
The event – organised by the Kochi Biennale Foundation in association with Asia Society and Mumbai Galleries – will begin at 5 pm at the National Gallery of Modern Art auditorium, Sir Cowasji Jahangir Public Hall in the city.
Following the release, Kallat will converse with KMB 2016 curator Sudarshan Shetty on charting the course of and lending framework to such a unique celebrati
on of art at a ‘Meet the Curator’ session.
Shetty is at the helm of the upcoming third edition of the Biennale, lending artistic direction to the largest international contemporary art event in India. Titled ‘forming in the pupil of an eye’, KMB 2016 will run for near four months from December 12, 2016 till March 29, 2017.
Shetty’s vision for the Biennale draws from mythical accounts of India as the ‘land of seven rivers’. The idea of streams flowing, converging and diverging underlies the curatorial questions that KMB 2016 will raise and the knowledge explored through the display and performance of the selected artworks. Looking at such motifs as tradition and community, he asks: ‘What does it mean to be together in time – to be contemporary?’