In Kerala, A Distinctly Indian Art Fair With International Appeal

Courtesy of Kochi Biennale FoundationErnesto Neto's installation “Life is a River.”

KOCHI - In a dank, musty loft at Moidu's Heritage, an unused warehouse in Fort Kochi, Kerala, the Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto stood precariously on a stool.

He had only a few hours to get his work installed before the Kochi-Muziris Biennale would kick off, and things were not going well. Clad in a white dhoti and T-shirt, he stretched the ends of a piece of cotton fabric and hooked it onto nails on the wooden rafters. His frustration was palpable. The muggy weather and the lack of electricity in the building were hampering his progress. “My work is all about tension. It ge ts incorporated into my art,” he muttered.

The three-month-long biennale, India's first, started this week with a nod to the mystical: At exactly noon on Dec. 12, 2012, the wrought-iron gates of Aspinwall House, a sea-facing colonial-era spice house that is one of the main venues, was thrown open to the public.

Courtesy of Kochi Biennale FoundationArtist Ernesto Neto.

Mr. Neto, who had labored through the night, had his installations in place by then. But not every artist had managed that.  Instead of an orderly display of paintings and sculpture, one encountered the chaotic scramble of industry on Wednesday - hammering, soldering and whirri ng sounds filled the air.  India, with its penchant for last-minute event preparation, seems to have created a new type of art fair, the art-in-progress show.

Critics and art lovers, far removed from clinical, impersonal gallery spaces, seemed delighted by this unusual engagement with artists. The creation of art, they said, is another dimension that needs to be explored. “One rarely gets to see artists at work at other biennales,” said the Beirut-based critic Kaelen Wilson-Goldie. “It is interesting to see how an artist tries to solve the problem of a particular environment and create something.”

The Kochi-Muziris Biennale seeks to “invoke the historic cosmopolitan legacy of Kochi and its predecessor, the ancient port of Muziris,” according to the fair's curators. Muziris is thought to have been involved in the spice trade as early as the third century B.C., trading with Romans, Greeks, Chinese, Jews and Arabs.  It is said to have  been wiped out in 1341, when the Periyar River flooded, after which the town of Cochin, 20 miles to the south, rose to commercial prominence. (Cochin was renamed Kochi in 1996.)

Courtesy of Kochi Biennale FoundationAspinwall House, one of the venues of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2012.

Eighty-eight artists from 24 countries are showcasing their work in 10 different venues in Kochi, including the Fort Kochi neighborhood . Some 85 percent of the work is site-specific, created with the surroundings and history of Kochi in mind. “Some of the rooms had cracked floors and broken tiles, but it was stunning to see they were able to use that space,” said the Del hi-based curator Ina Puri. “The subjects were global, like migration and the dispossessed, but the works were conceived to ensure that the flavors were distinctly Indian.”

For more information on the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, see the fair's Web site.