THERE HAVE BEEN six Kochi Muziris art biennales to date. And we have attended five of them. This year, as is usual, the biennale runs from December to the end of March. Today, we visited the Aspinwall site, the main venue of the 2025/26 biennale and of the previous ones.

For a start, the area dedicated to the Biennale has been halved: an ugly concrete wall separates the area used to display art from a large derelict space that used to be part of the Biennale precinct. This means that not only
has the open space surrounded by galleries been reduced but also some of the lovely buildings that used to house artworks now stand empty and are looking dejected.

As for the artwork on display at the main venue, the less said the better. Of the several hundred exhibits, only two appealed to me. Most of the other ‘artworks’ seemed to be assemblages of diverse objects. Many of these were less artistically arranged than what can be found in many shop window displays.

Naturally, given the way people often think these days, each exhibit was accompanied by an essay that tried to explain the ‘relevance’ of the creation and its relationship to problems that concern ‘woke’-minded people today. I felt that in most cases, the artists’ and curators’ ‘messages’ (written on information panels) were more important than the works’ artistic/aesthetic qualities.

In brief, I was disappointed by the main venue of the Biennale. In previous years, this part of the show contained at least a few outstanding works that appealed aesthetically and did not require reading a contrived explanation to appreciate them.

To end on a positive note, I liked the temporary structure that covers the seating area next to a refreshment stall. The shelter was designed by an artist from Pakistan.

[Over the next few days, we will visit some of the other Biennale sites and the many collateral exhibitions, and I hope that I will be able to be more positive about them than what I saw at the Aspinwall venue.]