Spectacular as it was, all was not well with the Kochi Biennale

There was much to celebrate at this edition of the Kochi Biennale but a dispute over unpaid wages for workers made its central message about inclusiveness ring hollow

The clothes line set against Kochi’s gorgeous waterfront, with white T-shirts fluttering in the breeze, looks like it might belong to fishermen from a nearby beach. On closer inspection, the shirts have the names and ages of men sold as slaves from Kerala by Dutch traders in the 17th century to their counterparts in South Africa, and the names of the buyer and seller. Now, they seem like mobile tombstones that are markers also of Western colonialism’s partiality for legalese and documentation of inhumane acts. The thoughtful guide at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale who was leading a group of young journalism students around this work by Sue Williamson, a British-born artist in her late seventies, remarked that she had always known Indian indentured labourers were sent overseas but that it was a revelation to hear that so many from Kerala were sold as slaves.

Not far away and also in the Aspinwall complex, V V Vinu’s sculpture made of wood from what is locally called a “suicide tree” featured a series of figurines of men nailed to the central mast of the work, standing one atop another. It at once recalled Christ’s crucifixion as well as symbolised India’s rigid hierarchies of class and caste. 

A Place Beyond Belief by Nathan Coley

These were just two examples of what the Kochi Biennale does so well: curate art installations that demand a reckoning of past and present. The extraordinary art installed in whitewashed warehouses that look like large yachts that might sail off into the harbour, makes it hard to forget. You might arrive thinking you are on a holiday excursion, but you leave arguing about and re-evaluating the installations you have seen for weeks thereafter.

This Biennale, which ended March 29, was memorable for many of these reasons. But it was also book-ended with controversy that began with anonymous MeToo allegations against one of the founders and concluded with a dehumanising row between one of the main contractors for the Biennale and the management, all documented on Instagram, that favourite app of the art world. Curator Anita Dube’s thoughtful inclusion of older women artists, artists from Africa and from marginalised communities within India added a rich dimension to this fourth Biennale. The Marxist overtones of many of the exhibits would be easy to shrug off — it is art, it is Kerala, after all — when the selection is compelling, but ring hollow and hypocritical after reading the Biennale’s legal response to the contractor. He is described variously as someone who puts up tents and is “only a works facilitator…it is not within his rank or station to preach to the Trustees of the Kochi Biennale Foundation”.

The T-shirt installation by Sue Williamson

One can’t help wonder who in management signed off on language such as this in 21st-century Kerala. For its part, the KBF has said the contractor’s quote was exorbitant and that his claims are a campaign of disinformation. Appu Thomas, the contractor, says he worked against impossible deadlines on major installations that required substantial overtime for his workers. The former Biennale CEO Manju Sara Rajan, who quit last year, said that Thomas had worked on credit for KMB 2016 in the midst of the chaos of demonetisation. In her Instagram posts, she described Thomas as a can-do, cost-conscious manager dedicated to the Biennale, who tirelessly chipped in to help put up publicity material on pillars of the Kochi Metro in 2016.

It is hard to watch the compelling video of Thomas surrounded by some of his workers demanding justice and not be reminded of Dube’s introduction to the Biennale: “Imagine those pushed to the margins of dominant narratives speaking not as victims, but as futurisms’ … sentient sentinels.” Life makes a mockery of art sometimes.

This sorry affair will haunt the Biennale’s many fans and financial supporters alike because the event has hitherto been characterised by an egalitarianism among vendors, volunteers and attendees that is especially rare in India. Unlike, say, at Art Basel Hong Kong, I have never seen cordoned-off VIP areas. The cross-section of visitors is more diverse than at any art event in the world. Entry tickets are Rs 100. On Mondays, entry is free. The Edible Archives project served inventive Kerala fusion food at soup-kitchen prices. I joined the free tour of the Aspinwall exhibits a couple of weeks ago and was almost as moved as the guide when an elderly Sikh gentleman shyly introduced himself as “the ex-husband” of one of the late artists whose work was being displayed. (A friend and I wondered whether he meant widower, but it’s not the sort of question one can ask someone on an art walk.) A little later, he was deservedly sent off to the outlying venues in a Biennale golf buggy.

Shilpa Gupta’s installation in a darkened room that paid tribute to poets and writers who had been detained by governments around the world

There was so much to see and so much to celebrate. Shilpa Gupta’s installation in a darkened room that paid tribute to poets and writers who had been detained by governments around the world was quietly theatrical and moving. As one leaned forward to peer at the text on pieces of paper impaled on a metal prong, a hundred mini speakers that looked like microphones buzzed with solemn intonations that sounded like commandments from the gods but were a chorus of the poets’ works. Nearby was the Iranian artist Shirin Neshat’s video work of a man singing before a full house while on the opposite side a woman sang hauntingly before an empty auditorium. It was a critique of the fact that women are not allowed to perform in public in Iran, but also of the double standards that women work and live by all over the world.

The hosting of a “Srinagar Biennale” off lanes lined with spice stores was moving just for being there. The frisking of people visiting the exhibit was aggressive and intrusive by intention; it sought to recreate what it must feel like to live in such a climate of surveillance in Kashmir. Lighter but serious-minded nonetheless was Vipin Dhanurdharan’s tribute to a Kerala social reformer’s protest against caste segregation more than a hundred years ago. Dhanurdharan asked people if they would cook for him if he painted their portraits. This enabled him to befriend and eat with people from a range of religious communities. In the main Aspinwall square, the pony-tailed 30-year-old recreated a communal eating space where anyone could cook together. In a country where people are sometimes denied housing or attacked for what they allegedly eat, the exhibit was as uplifting as it was spontaneous and amateurish.

Not surprisingly, art with such an overlay of social and political imagery is not everyone’s cup of tea. A friend who loves the Biennale and has worked with it worries that each successive Biennale has become more political: “I wonder which piece you would want to keep in a display of the world’s greatest artworks any time hence. To me, art cannot be statements dressed up.” But, art must also engage and question and spark debate: The Kochi Biennales succeed handsomely by that measure. By contrast, much of Damien Hirst’s recent work, not to mention Tracey Emin’s unmade bed displayed at Tate Britain two decades ago, seem neither great art nor have much of a social conscience.

As often happens with contemporary art, there were moments when this Biennale tipped over into comic self-parody worthy of a Hirst or Emin. The Danish artist E B Itso’s gigantic wheel suspended by a red cord belonged in a theme park. This critique of unfettered construction and capitalism and banal sermon about “the overwhelming darkness that could be the future” was intended as a protest honouring rubber farmers who committed suicide in Kerala when commodity prices crashed in 2015. Our guide that morning told us the specifications by the artist were too difficult to carry out by the biennale team so the tyre had to be made by JK Tyre. It will return to JK Tyre to be used as a display outside one of their offices. One final grotesque irony: Itso’s is among the installations that Thomas’ workers allege the Biennale has not paid them for.