Artists at India’s top biennial allege backstage chaos – ARTnews.com

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The Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India’s largest and most important showcase of contemporary art, is embroiled in controversy after more than half of attendees to this edition publicly alleged a breakdown in communication with the direction and a spread of other problems. Before the show opened, one artist pulled out and several artists told ARTnews that they were unable to complete their work before leaving the country.

Of the 90 artists featured in the exhibition this year, 53 signed a letter published by e-flux that spoke of the chaos behind the scenes. “The scale and ambition of the Biennale must be commensurate with its financial situation,” the artists wrote, saying that fees and production costs had not been paid to them. They also reported that there were ongoing fundraising and manpower issues at the biennale.

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The letter was just the latest controversy facing the biennale, which is usually held every two years in the city of Kochi in the state of Kerala.

Ahead of the show’s opening in December, as reported by Art Newspaper and Hyperallergic, the Kerala government is said to have pulled out of a deal to acquire Aspinwall House, the show’s central site, from a private developer who usually rents the complex for the event. This prevented Biennale staff from preparing the venue for the installation. On top of that, there had been unexpected storms that slowed down the opening process.

Kochi Biennale Foundation Chairman Bose Krishnamachari told the Hindu that only ₹3 crore out of the ₹7 crore (or $850,000) Kerala state budget for KMB has been received by the foundation . He declined to comment for this article.

Despite funding and infrastructure issues, the foundation continued to advertise the December 12 opening on social media, and artists flew to Kerala in early December to install their work. They arrived to find leaking roofs, missing materials and media players, and even unusable toilets in Aspinwall, according to the open letter.

“Institutional optimism that ‘everything will be fine’ is not a viable strategy for producing such an ambitious event,” the artists wrote in their letter.

The foundation called an emergency meeting on December 11 to announce the two-week postponement. At that time, only 10% of the show had been installed, according to the artists’ letter.

“We believe the Biennale Foundation should have made the decision to postpone weeks earlier, when many failures were already apparent,” the artists wrote. “Long before, thousands of art lovers traveled for opening days, and most artists themselves had to return and could not stay to see their own work installed or engage with the work of other artists and visitors.”

The biennale did not respond to a request for comment on a list of requests sent by ARTnews.

A lack of transparency

The Kochi-Muziris Biennial has, in previous editions, withstood other scandals. In 2019, workers from the 2018 edition said the biennale had not paid them for their work. During this latest edition, Biennale co-founder Riyas Komu resigned as the foundation’s secretary after allegations of sexual harassment. And in 2011, even before the opening of the first edition, the government of Kerala was asked to investigate the financial management of the biennial.

Delhi-based artist Asim Waqif said he was aware of the biennial’s shaky legacy, with former attendees warning him of unpaid production costs and installation delays. Still, Waqif told ARTnews, “I had dreamed for years of being part of the biennale.”

After artist Shubigi Rao, the curator of the 2022 edition, extended an invitation, Waqif found he had to scale back his ambition for this dream opportunity. Waqif had planned to sustainably harvest the bamboo for his large outdoor sculpture. Since the Biennale would not advance money or provide him with a budget to oversee this part of the project, Waqif said he conceded the fundraising to the foundation’s management. Only a third of the material was available when it arrived in late November for installation.

By training local flooring workers to help create the immersive structure, Waqif was able to complete his project for the original opening date. Although his work was completed on time, he still finds the foundation’s lack of transparency frustrating. “Biennials should give artists the opportunity to expand artistic production beyond studios and galleries,” he said. “Artists had to limit the scope of their projects to deal with the shortcomings of the foundation.”

London-based artist Pio Abad, along with his wife, jewelry designer Frances Wadsworth Jones, also said they had scaled back after receiving little help to complete their initial plan. Instead of creating a three-meter-long facsimile of a necklace belonging to Imelda Marcos, wife of corrupt former Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Abad and Wadsworth Jones built a small 3D-printed copy of the one of Marcos’ tiaras. “At the end of the day, it was the right job for the time being,” Abad told ARTnews. “But it’s always nice to be asked to work on the scale of the Biennale to produce something that fits that scale.”

Abad said the biennale did not inform itself or other artists about what was going on behind the scenes. “If there were challenges,” he continued, “I think all artists would have appreciated being told exactly what those challenges were and how we can overcome them, rather than trying to guess what works and what doesn’t.”

Most of the artists were unable to complete their projects before leaving India, with only 10% completed by the initial opening on December 12, according to the open letter.

“I took flight [to India] having no idea what I was going to find,” recalls Berlin-based Philip Rizk. He arrived on December 10 to experience the screens of his four-channel ground video and electricity at Aspinwall. Although members of the CAMP collective helped Rizk mount his work, the piece was still not fully set when he left.

“I felt like I had been scammed”

One project was never even realized because the artist behind pulled out of the Biennale the day she arrived, she said in an interview with ARTnews.

Landing in Kochi from Nairobi at 3am on December 11, Jackie Karuti had not been told where she would be staying or who would be picking her up. “While none of this was confirmed when I arrived, I felt like I had been scammed,” she said.

What she received was an email from Bose Krishnamachari, the foundation’s president, announcing the postponement. Without per diem, without a signed contract, and without any idea of ​​the state of her installation (she had not received any communication from the biennale since November 23, two weeks before her arrival), she decided not to stay. “The importance of the KMB and the challenging but ambitious position required to organize such an event is not overstated to me at this time,” she said. “I would downplay the terrible organizational structure, the lack of care and accountability, which is the problem here.”

Karuti, originally from Kenya, acknowledged that like in his home country, India is a difficult place to hold such an event. Still, she was frustrated with how the foundation failed to pick up the slack, blaming the weather and infrastructure instead. Other basic administrative necessities they oversaw, such as contracts, were never resolved.

“Legally, if something were to happen to my work or myself, they are not responsible,” she said. “I emailed them to sign, and in the end they never signed the contract.” Without a signed contract, she is also concerned about intellectual property. Since returning to Nairobi, Karuti has not known whether his artist and visa fees will be paid.

Karuti, Rizk and many other participating artists have conceptual practices, often predominantly video; they depend on biennials to show their work. “Biennials and art events of this magnitude are crucial for independent artists who are rarely invited to exhibit at larger institutions,” Karuti explained. “It’s considerably difficult for those working conceptually with no one to advocate for them and it gets worse if you’re from an area where the art landscape is still nascent, making it even more difficult to produce and complete your work. and your ideas.” The Biennale did not respond to a request for comment on Karuti’s withdrawal.

The Biennale responds

In their open letter, the artists stood by the curator, who they say “has risen to challenges far beyond her competence”. Artists talked about Rao working in the ground herself, supervising the expedition and managing the cleaning of waterlogged places, even being hospitalized the week before the opening. (Rao did not respond to a request for comment for this article.)

Krishnamachari sent a letter of apology to the artists shortly after the e-flux letter. He called “poor finances, workforce attrition, the pandemic and uncertainties about venues” “serious shortfalls” on the part of the biennale, and admitted the delay was ” a serious error in judgement”. He promised a review by the foundation’s board in the first quarter of 2023, with institutional changes to follow.

Regardless of what happens, the artists involved believe that this Kochi-Muziris biennial will provide an important case study for biennials held in years to come.

“I keep thinking that Kochi could be the first post-pandemic biennale, where we can no longer take things for granted,” Abad said. “You can’t take production lines for granted. You can’t take shipping times for granted. You can’t take labor for granted like we used to.

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