Figure 1 Kochi-Muziris Biennale poster on a wall in Fort Kochi. The proclamation is an important marketing message, which had to work against much adverse publicity, reinforcing the positive message both locally and nationally that the organizers have managed to stage the first biennale in India. I noted many Kochi-Muziris Biennale posters had been torn down as part of local protests against the festival, with some being papered over, tellingly, by posters in the local Malayalam language that denounced the corruption of the biennale and its organizers. These black-and-red posters, with their pragmatic Soviet-era styling, stand out from the carefully branded biennale materials, while subverting the festival logo by adding a skull motif to it. Photograph courtesy of the author 2012 Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/cultural-politics/article-pdf/9/3/296/405126/297.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 The INDIAN BIENNALE EFFECT The Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2012 Robert E. D’Souza Abstract The Kochi-Muziris Biennale, the most recent global art biennale, was launched in Kochi in the state of Kerala, India, in 2012. This essay considers the “biennale effect,” locating it within India’s recent history of radical political modernization and in the context of the state’s attempts to establish itself in terms of internationalism and contemporaneity via the arts. Pivotal to this discussion of the biennale effect is the recognition of a growing critical discourse about the biennale format by scholars, critics, and curators. The impact of the Indian biennale on the formerly Communist city of Kochi is also explored, including photographic documentation by the author, in the context of the contradictions and paradoxes raised by India’s hosting of this global art event. Keywords art; Kochi; India; biennale; modernism; globalization; exhibition; Marxism; culture industry; Rancie`re uring my visits to India as an artist and academic over the last D twenty years, I have witnessed the social and cultural effects of its rapid economic growth, especially the impact of this growth on contemporary art and visual culture. The most notable change has been the increasing internationalization of Indian art in response to globalization and the subsequent anxieties this internationalization has engendered. The arts in India have responded to the resulting social and political issues through a diversity of engagements, including a recognition of the shifting distribution and reception of contemporary Indian art in a more globalized “art world,” and changes in the form and content of art produced, particularly in the key metropolitan cities where these developments have had the greatest impact. 297 Cultural Politics, Volume 9, Issue 3, q 2013 Duke University Press DOI: 10.1215/17432197-2346991 Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/cultural-politics/article-pdf/9/3/296/405126/297.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 Robert E. D’Souza Worldwide, one of the most visible attributes of art and compared those with effects of arts globalization has been the its possibilities as an active social force. increase in the number of biennales and These ideas are here applied to the radical international art fairs, with the Kochi-Muziris potential of the biennale in India, as an event Biennale in December 2012 being the beyond passive mass spectacle, drawing on most recent, as well as the first to be held in the alternative perspectives on art and India. My goal in visiting this biennale was not community expressed by philosopher only to view how an event of this scale Jacques Rancie` re in his seminal text might be realized but also to see how India The Emancipated Spectator (2009). might respond to the globalized biennale format and, more specifically, how the The Biennale: A Longer History of Politics transformative effect of a biennale might The pressures in 1991on the Indian manifest itself in the city of Kochi, which is government to create reform through outside the recognized centers of Indian economic liberalization can be seen as an end contemporary art. I also wanted to explore of the postindependence project started in how the regional legacy of communism 1947 under the first Prime Minister of India, would affect India’s opportunity on this Jawaharlal Nehru. Opening a once global stage, even as the country recovered protectionist national economy to the from the 2008 deflation of India’s overheated possibilities of global free-trade markets has, art market, which had generated debates among its many effects on everyday life in concerning the future of Indian art, India, helped to economically and culturally especially the economics of Indian art both valorize contemporary Indian art in the nationally and globally. emerging globalized art scene. This has Twenty years ago, India was near propelled many contemporary Indian artists bankruptcy as successive postindepen- like Jitish Kallat, Subodh Gupta, and Bharti dence governments had failed to lift the Kher into new national and international country from its third-world status and had territories and generated a renewed instead built up excessive international debt interest in the Indian “modernists” and from loans taken out from the International “progressives,” including F. N. Souza, Monetary Fund and the World Bank. This M. F. Husain, and S. H. Raza, who set the critical situation became the trigger for collective mandate of political activism, radical economic change. intellectual vigor, and radical critique that has To understand the situation that allowed become a legacy to a successive generation this biennale to take place, one has to first of Indian artists. 9:3 November 2013 † understand the ascent of Indian artists and The economic success and optimism art within the international scene, which that followed reform in India can be paralleled the country’s rapid economic expressed in the nationalistic marketing growth. It is also important to consider the slogan of “India Shining,” which captured POLITICS effect of current debates that consider the mood of India’s new economic status the relationship of politics to the formation of during the political campaigning of 2004. It artistic identity, as well as to consider the was, in the main, the economically energized perceptions of India that are revealed cities of India that became these shining CULTURAL through contemporary art. Some of the national beacons of India’s reversal in contemporary critiques of the global biennale fortunes, and it was in these centers of 298 format have discussed the individual cosmopolitanism, synonymous with a more Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/cultural-politics/article-pdf/9/3/296/405126/297.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 The INDIAN BIENNALE EFFECT: The KOCHI-MUZIRIS BIENNALE 2012 globalized outlook, that the effects of possible, while the success of Indian liberalization and rapid urbanization were contemporary art becomes manifest within primarily felt. The main beneficiaries of these this biennale and its particular geographical changes have been the wealthy and the setting. growing urban middle classes. However, My attendance at the launching of these same cities are now facing growing India’s first global art biennale is, therefore, financial inequality, tensions of class and prefaced by the question of the impact of caste, and problems stemming from social these widespread social and political and political difference—a situation changes, both on the intentions of the exacerbated by an increasing subaltern biennale and on key artists whose work is workforce swelled by poor rural migrants itself a commentary shaped by these seeking their fortune. changes. While this new addition to the Both the economic benefits and the growing list of global biennales can be seen problems inherent in globalization have had a as another move in India’s pursuit of profound effect on contemporary art and global recognition, it can also be read as a artists, helping to define a new international conscious effort to elevate Indian art in consideration of contemporary Indian art. terms of aligning it with a global and Some have argued that economic contemporary culture industry. Such an liberalization has allowed back into India the alignment can be understood in terms Western imperialism that Nehru’s of the dialectical forces of globalization that protectionist and nationalistic policies had encompass a network of global art previously deflected. Others see this market structures, of art production and economic globalization as a benefit that has consumption, replete with the issues allowed a “new” India to be realized, one in this brings, and in fact, the biennale in India which the positive outcomes of economic has triggered much critical discussion about growth could potentially benefit all by the disparity between those who most expanding opportunities. likely will benefit from it and those who A contemporary understanding of the most likely will be left behind. biennale must take into account this legacy The growth in international interest in of recent radical historical change in India: Indian arts can be seen as one of the benefits not only the redrawing of the colonial world of the economic reforms of the 1990s, map, but also the national modernizing as it allowed an alignment of commerce with agenda, which, though first envisioned under a contemporary and more internationally Nehru, has been realized through recent focused Indian art world that speaks more economic changes that have hastened directly of universally understood issues India’s rise as a global economic power. The of globalization. The biennale effect might be Kochi-Muziris Biennale might be described seen as the sum of these situations, as a timely assertion of India’s contemporary which paved the way for India’s entry, a first, global identity as part of a new agenda to into the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011, which POLITICS forge a national identity not just economically was then followed by the Kochi-Muziris but through “soft power.” What is apparent Biennale, with both events becoming key from this biennale is that overlapping markers of India’s positioning onto a CULTURAL histories of radical political change, global platform for art.