A Girl’s Journey of Understanding Art Through the Kochi Muziris Biennale 2014
- 11 Nov 2016
- Fathima AbdulKader
- Features
Do you remember the first time art made you feel something? Because I know I remember the first time art moved me and how much. I had seen art and understood it as a concept; as a person with a penchant for abstract ideas and a streak for the unusual, it was a given trait to want to love art. But actually knowing what art means is an entirely different thing.
A trip down to Fort Kochi has always been my favorite getaway since as far as I can remember. But the trip to Kochi Muziris Biennale 2014 was unlike anything I had experienced before. The roads were packed with people of all ages and from all over the world. I confess, the prospect of walking for hours looking at “art” did not excite me. The promise of pizza afterwards was more appealing at the time. But as soon as we stepped inside Aspinwall house after buying our ticket, I started to understand what caused the whole world to look to my home town in such awe. A lot of the installations featured things I had seen a thousand times before from light bulbs to toy trains, but the artists had portrayed them in such a way that they seemed like something I had never seen before in my life. I finally understood the line from Eleanor and Park, about how “art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”
With installations from artists from all over the world spread over five venues, I did not get the chance to go and see every piece put up. But whatever I did see, all of them made me feel or experience something that I had not before. Truth be told, I didn’t know even the names of the artists behind these installations, only about how they made me feel and why. So from what I saw at Aspinwall House, the following are the pieces that truly stood out for me:
Black Water Vortex Dissention, Anish Kapoor
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A whirlpool is not something one gets to see up close, whoever has probably didn’t remain to tell the tale. But this installation held me spellbound for a long time, how the speed of the whirl pool changed and how the sound made it seem so real.
Fear, Sissel Tolaas
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This piece had a few pieces of rock on display and seemed completely insignificant. But when I went up to the details and realized what it was, I was completely amazed. The artist combined chemistry and art to create something called a “smellscape” in which she created a database of sweat smells produced by 20 men around the world. These smell molecules were then recreated and painted onto ancient ballast stones from ships that once ported in Kochi. That is intense!
Lost #12, Kyoto Kuwakubo
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I spend hours in the dark room this installation was set up in. As the toy train kept going around the room and the shadows on the walls showed cityscapes, including high rise buildings, electric lines, and people. The entire shadow presentation takes less than 7 minutes, but it was done in such a way that it seems much longer, but everyone including me stayed to watch it repeatedly.
Teddy Universe, Pors & Rao
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The black teddy with fiber optic lights that mimicked the night sky was a truly unique piece at the event. If you looked closely up at the suspended piece, you could see that the lights were distributed at random distances and had a slight vibration that gave it even more of a night sky like look.
The Marx Archive- Logic of Disappearance, Madhusudhanan
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The series of 90 charcoal drawings by Madhusudhanan were installed across the expanse of a big white room. The drawings depicted motifs from moments in history combined with prominent personalities and more. The best part was to look at each piece critically and figure out what was what. On the more artistic level, his work is based on the contribution of Marxism to artistic culture and the human race, describing Marxism as ‘the greatest wave' in the history of thought.
Traveler’s Tales – Blue Prints, Lavanya Mani
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As a person constantly fascinated with textile, this installation with paintings on cotton cloth were particularly striking to me. Traveler’s Tales are a series of sails dyed in the kalamkari technique and bore motifs reminiscent of sea travel and colonialism. The artist incorporated excerpts from letters written by travelers to India and used cyanotype to color the sails.
Undercurrent - Mona Hatoum
The beauty of Mona Hatoum’s work was that it combined something as simple as cables, bulbs and dimmers to invoke a feeling of anxiety and slow frustration, as the lights brightened and dimmed. The intent behind the work was to make it seem like the installation had a life of its own and is a beating organism. It was surprising to realize how much the constant pulsation without stop can leave one feeling aggravated.
The reflections that these experiences made me do where so different and unconventional. Now there is only 30 days to go for the Kochi Muziris Biennale 2016 and I will be definitely going.
Do you remember the first time you saw the Biennale or when art made you feel something? Do drop a line and let us know you stories here or on our Facebook page.
Text: Fathima Abdul Kader
Images: Various Sources
