Curating new beginnings

Sudarshan Shetty was a curator waiting to happen. The artist whose scale and public space projects have excited comment from 1995 (Paper Moon) onwards, has done what is expected of every artist worth his salt today - provoke debate around local as well as global issues of migration, displacement, partisanship and parochialism, identity, sexuality and violence as part of a societal palimpsest. At times alarmist, occasionally celebratory, arguably ritualistic, often bordering on the fantastic, his work has evoked admiration and aversion in equal measure. Dinosaurs making love to racing cars, totemic symbols of Kashmiri dislocation, skeletons and bones cast in metal, even a flying bus (well, almost), his prodigious output has been part of museum collections, biennales and urban outings. And now, with his appointment as curator for the third edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (starting 2016), the stage is set for him to switch roles. 

What exactly does a curator bring to the table? Somewhat simplistically, of course, it involves artists from around the world being picked for their unique vision and the curator's ability to address their diverse voices within a definite context. This is more challenging than it appears, for a biennale, unlike an art fair, is critically viewed for its ability to combine freshness in language with a commentary that draws attention to current social and political discourses. It is a premise that requires extensive travel, knowledge, wisdom, depth and understanding on one hand, and the adroit ability to network and woo the best talent at a given spot within a given time, often drawing artists away from other, more important global art platforms. A biennale, often, is only as important (or not), and as successful (or not), as its curator's ability to both theorise and realise.

This is where the choice of curator is critical. The first two editions of Kochi-Muziris had Bose Krishnamachari (also its founder along with Riyas Komu) and Jitish Kallat as curators, and with Shetty as its choice for the third edition, the stage is once again set for an artist in that exacting and often contrarian role. Where Shetty brings his participative experience, his travels and knowledge from within his peer group, the ability to plan and execute his own, unique and often large scale projects to the task at hand, one must ask: How does an artist as curator think differently from one who is professionally trained for the job?

The previous editions of Kochi-Muziris ought to be a pointer. Both previous curators exhibited the ability to pull off ambitious projects and displayed the ability to bring in an assembly of world-class artists, but as the biennale grows in stature, it will be more critically evaluated - by other curators, of course, but also by museums, cultural institutions and repositories. It is this Shetty will be tested on, and even though he can count on the support (and experience) of Krishnamachari and Komu, the task is his and will not be an easy one. As curator, he will have to lay out a mandate for selecting projects from among artists he is either close to, or does not care much for, neither of which should affect the final choice.

It is this which makes a curators job unenviable (or enviable, depending on your point of view) and will also influence Shetty's manner of conceiving his own future projects forever. Having understood the way a jury and a curator examine and reward a project critically, he will be both at an advantage and a disadvantage. Whether he follows his heart and its spontaneous output, or his mind and the currency of curatorial evaluation, time and the 2016-17 biennale will tell.
Kishore Singh is a Delhi-based writer and art critic. These views are personal and do not reflect those of the organisation with which he is associated