The Sixth Kochi-Muziris Biennale Foregrounds Human Experience

The Kochi Biennale, which launched in 2012, was not only the first Indian biennial of contemporary art but also the most politically engaged and socially critical contemporary art platform in the country, addressing some of India’s most pressing issues despite being the only major government-funded exhibition. As such, it has retained a distinct civic responsibility. Conceived by artists Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu with support from the Government of Kerala, the Kochi Biennale was modeled from the outset on large-scale international exhibitions like Venice and São Paulo while remaining rooted in the layered histories of Kerala’s port cities. Artist-led and experimental in ethos, the biennale is intentionally site-responsive, engaging directly with the historical fabric of the coastal city and its colonial past. It occupies heritage buildings, warehouses, godowns and public sites around Fort Kochi and Mattancherry, and places strong emphasis on public programming as an event conceived first and foremost for local people.

Under the curatorial direction of Nikhil Chopra and HH Art Spaces in Goa, the sixth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB)—which opened on December 12 and runs through March 31, 2026—unfolds across multiple venues in Kochi and features sixty-six artists and collectives from more than twenty countries. Titled “For the Time Being,” this edition brings attention back to the body, to our physical, sensorial and emotional experience of the world now, in the present moment, acknowledging the limits and possibilities of being human as the only perspective available to us. At its center is the notion of time understood from a purely human perspective. “The idea is that we measure our experience in the distance between heartbeats,” Chopra told Observer, emphasizing how, in a time defined by artificiality and synthesis, the biennale focuses instead on the physical dimension—our embodied presence and lived experience of the world.

“We’ve really placed the body at the center of our investigation—our understanding, our research, our way of thinking, working and being,” he adds, noting that the notion of “being,” both as verb and noun, anchors this edition. “The biennale wants to take stock of what it means to be present on this planet together. Even though we inherit collective histories and memories, and we speak of ourselves as a people stretched across time, landscapes and geographies, one fact remains: we are here now,” Chopra reflected. “We are contemporaries of one another in the present, and we share this moment. That sense of presence is one of the forces driving us.”

Here, the human body is understood as the only filter, site of encounter and witness to temporality as we confront the present world. For this reason, presence—physical presence, specifically—sits at the core of the show and shaped the criteria for selecting artists. “Whenever we visited an artist’s studio, or when I looked back at artworks I’ve encountered around the world, we were asking: can we feel the artist’s presence? Not only through performance or liveness, though those are part of our programming, but in any medium—can you believe that the artist is truly here, in their work?” Chopra said. This approach led to the notion of “the neighboring body.” “We wanted to feel the sweat, blood and toil of the artist, whether in painting, sculpture or any other form, and we were looking for intelligence that emerges through making.” Ultimately, the biennale is about returning us to real encounters—with the work, with others and with the world.

In assembling this edition’s group of international and local artists, Chopra resisted the notion that an international curator must spend months in transit, endlessly flying between biennales, fairs and studios. Instead, he looked back on nearly 25 years of curatorial practice, revisiting longstanding relationships with artists who had been collaborators, interlocutors or companions across earlier projects. “Many of these relationships were formed through years of working together, exchanging ideas and navigating exhibitions side by side,” he explained. “That existing foundation naturally shaped the initial group of 66 artists, since the process was grounded in trust and longstanding dialogue rather than discovery through constant travel.”

Most of the curatorial research, time and resources were devoted to exploring India’s diverse and often overlooked artistic landscape, including regions outside the main metropolitan centers. “Rather than crisscrossing the globe, I spent time traveling across India, visiting studios in various regions and getting to know emerging practices more closely,” Chopra explained. “For many of these artists, this will be a first opportunity to present their work on a platform of this scale, alongside practitioners who are internationally recognized and have developed extensive, mature bodies of work.”

The artist list now spans major international figures like Ibrahim Mahama, Adrian Villar Rojas, Marina Abramović, Otobong Nkanga and Nari Ward, as well as rising international voices such as Sandra Mujinga, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Mónica de Miranda, Maria Hassabi and Shiraz Bayjoo. They appear alongside established, emerging and newly rediscovered artists from India and its diaspora, including modernist Gieve Patel, Monika Correa, Sapta Gupta, Bhasha Chakrabarti, Arti Kadam and Mathew Krishanu.

“The rigor, the practice and the resilience of some of these artists are incredible,” Chopra noted, referring particularly to the Indian artists included and emphasizing not only their craftsmanship but also the depth of their material investigations. “They are so deeply engaged with what’s happening around them: their research, their observations, the risks they’re taking in their practices, their commitment, their love for making, their love for process. The artists we’re inviting to the Biennale—especially the younger generation—are truly ready for this moment.”

The biennale, he reflected, becomes an important catalyst for a new generation of local artists—a place where different levels of experience meet, and younger practitioners can observe how more seasoned artists navigate the realities of complex exhibition-making.

The biennale also highlights overlooked figures often working outside mainstream circuits. Among them, Chopra mentions Malu Joy (Sister Roswin CMC), a nun who creates intimate drawings of elderly women she cared for. “The way she captures these deeply expressive, almost expressionistic faces—it’s absolutely the kind of work that deserves to be shown at any international exhibition,” he said.

At the same time, bringing established artists to India remains essential, as their experience with large-scale exhibitions becomes especially valuable in a context where production conditions can be demanding and unpredictable. “Artists here need agility; they need to shift, to shape-shift, to adapt their ideas to the realities in which we are making this exhibition,” Chopra said.

All the included artists were encouraged to think and act site-specifically, responding to venues directly connected to India’s history of trade and colonialism. This edition takes over spaces such as Aspinwall House, once the headquarters of the trading company Aspinwall & Company Ltd; Pepper House, a former spice warehouse on Vembanad Lake; and Island Warehouse on Willingdon Island, created in 1928 during the modernization of Kochi Harbour. Additional heritage venues include the 111 (KVJ Building), once a center of the rice trade in Mattancherry; Space, formerly the Indian Chamber of Commerce; and Durbar Hall in Ernakulam, originally the royal courthouse of the Maharaja of Kochi.

“The ghosts of the past are etched right into the walls of these warehouses—the very spaces the artists are showing in,” Chopra observed. “They’re not white, pristine cubes at all; they’re full of texture, memory, smells, history—distant voices still coming through. You can feel the Dutch, you can feel the Portuguese; their histories are woven into the warp and weft of Kochi itself. It’s part of the embroidery, the textile—the tapestry—of this place.” This, he explained, is why he titled the exhibition “For the Time Being.” It is about accepting and understanding what we have and who we are.

For Chopra, this biennale is an invitation to understand our relationship to the present in relation to the past. “In many ways, the voices coming from parts of the world that have been oppressed, exploited and enslaved are written into our DNA,” he considered. “We don’t choose our bodies, and that inheritance runs through us like a kind of cellular memory. It’s embedded in the place.”

Many of the projects grew directly out of site visits, prompting artists to develop work in response to the particularities of each location. “Artists were asked to react rather than simply act,” Chopra emphasized. Yet not all artists are activists. “There is an active, engaged quality in the way we present our ideas, but ultimately it’s the aesthetics, the desire and the poetics that shape the politics in most cases. We’re bringing those elements into the work, but we’re not foregrounding the politics in an overt, confrontational way.”

Being the only major cultural institution funded by public money also carries the risk of political oversight. Chopra acknowledged this obliquely, noting that over years of organizing projects in India, he and his team at HH Art Spaces have learned how to navigate potential censorship or controversy. “We’ve been around for about twelve years, working in Goa for the past ten. My own artistic career spans about twenty to twenty-five years. My practice has always been about subverting certain ideas. The politics are there, but they sit beneath the aesthetic surface. Over time, we’ve learned how to navigate and circumvent the powers that might oppose what we do. You have to arrive at those conversations slowly; you don’t just deliver everything upfront. It’s more like letting a drop of poison sit in a cup of wine. The work carries the charge, but it reveals itself subtly, not all at once.”

That civic responsibility also translates into a biennale conceived primarily for local audiences: roughly 90 percent of visitors come from Kerala within a 300 to 400-kilometer radius, and attendance this year is expected to reach one million. Developing a substantial public program was therefore essential, extending the biennale’s content well beyond the sixty-six artists and fifty-five new commissions. “This entire part of the city is going to come alive over the next four days,” Chopra said, noting the strong local appetite for art. “People come with a sense of curiosity, inquiry, joy, desire and wonder. They genuinely want to see contemporary art, and we try to feed that hunger—quite literally, actually.”

The Canteen Project, for instance, is a living, participatory collaboration between artists Bani Abidi from Pakistan and Anupama from India, conceived as a shared food project for visitors. Meals are prepared by a women’s empowerment collective in Kerala associated with a major state initiative. “So you have Indian and Pakistani women collaborating, an architect and an artist working side by side, and the meals being served by this women’s group. It feels like a big mama project—nourishing the collective, in a present moment of human encounter and sharing, and completely aligned with the spirit of this edition.”

The curator stressed that accessibility is fundamental. The exhibition, he argues, should connect with audiences through immediacy, delight and seduction rather than alienate them with dense language, heavy theory or works requiring extensive explanation. “The connection should begin with something immediate—seductive, delightful—because we’re still in the process of building a critical mass of contemporary art viewers. It’s important to invite people in, not make them feel uncomfortable about being here, and even when discomfort arises, it should feel like part of a welcoming experience.”

At the core of Chopra and HH Art Spaces’ curatorial approach for this sixth edition is a commitment to embracing the character of the place—its specificities, challenges and potential—rather than aspiring to resemble anything else. Instead of delivering a polished spectacle for the art world, VIPs or the international circuit, Chopra wanted to bring visitors into the act of making, into the energies of creativity, experimentation and exploration. “The goal isn’t to produce a Swiss exhibition; that doesn’t work here. The goal is to create something that matches the soul and the conditions of this place, and that’s the connection I’m trying to make.”

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