The dusty, blue doors of KVJ Warehouse in Mattancherry open into a cool, dark, many-pillared space beyond which is a high-ceilinged warehouse. The coolness inside, accompanied by some dankness, is a welcome change from the heat outside on Bazaar Road. This is one of the venues of the Kochi Muziris Biennale, which opens on December 12. Two workers are busy scraping off old paint on the warehouse walls. Light streams in through glass panes on the ventilations, some stained glass and others by dirt and time. Perched on their ledges are a couple of pigeons; a pair of doors on the side are open.
“One of the artists, the Belgium-based visual artist and tapestry-maker, Otobong Nkanga intends to set up a garden installation here,” says Amu Josephina Mohan, the production manager on the Biennale production team, which is led by Shyam Patel.
For Amu, who has a Masters in Museology and is a curator, this is a full circle moment. She was 16 when she came to the first edition of the Kochi Muziris Biennale in 2012, she remembers it as being “life changing. I had not seen art in such a space before. The Biennale caused a shift in my perception of art and led to my work in art.”
Work is on in full earnest at all the Biennale venues. Aspinwall House will be missed (due to a change of ownership). The adjacent Coir Godown and the Director’s Bungalow are the production team’s base. A pile of waste — wood, paper, dried leaves, among other things are being burnt outside. Inside the building, there are snaking cables and wires, paints, tapes and scales besides other kinds of construction paraphernalia, and two kittens who seem to be overseeing the work.
Kudumbashree members sewing jute sacks at SMS Hall in Mattancherry
| Photo Credit:
THULASI KAKKAT
“We’re on fire!” is how Amu describes the pace of work. “Local carpenters, electricians, painters, masons, gardeners, sign board makers, Kudumbashree members… everybody is involved,” she says. One spots the curator, Nikhil Chopra and his team busily hopping from one venue to the next checking the progress of work and giving feedback.
The production team of 14 ‘co-producers’ as the core members are called, has been working, almost continuously with little rest as the D-day draws close. The process of putting together the team was completed in August. Helping them is a group of volunteers from across the country. There are eight site-in charges in the team who are assigned sites, which they would be responsible for.
The works of 66 artists from across the globe will be showcased across 22 venues in and around Fort Kochi, Willingdon Island (a first) and Durbar Hall in Ernakulam.
Work underway at the Director’s Bungalow adjacent to Aspinwall House in Fort Kochi
| Photo Credit:
THULASI KAKKAT
Seeing a few of the venues, one comprehends the scale of the work that putting up a show like this demands. Especially when some of the venues like KVJ Warehouse or Anand Warehouse are run down.
“We don’t want to change these places drastically or take away their inherent character. We want to use the structures as they are, while retaining the environment and make what exists work,” says Abna C Azad, an architect and a post-graduate in regional planning, who is a production assistant on the team.
“Although we are assigned our respective sites, we [the team] work in tandem so that work progresses smoothly everywhere,” adds Abna, who hails from Cherthala.
The term for the team’s work is ‘venue preparation’, of which conservation and restoration are a part. The decision about whose work to display where is taken based on the artist’s work, and the suitability of the space, in conjunction with the artist. “The artists visited the sites with Nikhil earlier this year and zeroed in on spaces closest to their practice,” says Amu.
Arjun Nair, Amu Josephina, Abna Azad, from production team and Divyesh Undaviya from curatorial team of Kochi Muziris Biennale
| Photo Credit:
THULASI KAKKAT
Anand Warehouse, also in Mattancherry, is in a similar state of disuse. Though the warehouses are rectangular structures, the architecture has differences. Anand Warehouse has parallel, elongated high ceilinged spaces, inside one are rows of chairs in various states of being broken, which one mistakes to be part of some sort of installation. Abna informs that the chairs were found across the sites and were stored here to be repaired, if needed. “A part of this space will become a ‘parliament’. It will look very different once the work is here,” she says, referring to Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama’s work. Most of these spaces will showcase more than one artist’s works.
Across the road, at SMS Hall three women are busy sewing jute sacks together. The women, part of a local Kudumbashree unit, have been roped in to do this. These pieced-together jute sacks will form a part of an installation which is likely to be put up there. The hall is modern, air-conditioned and cool: a world apart from KVJ Warehouse and Anand Warehouse.
One can’t help but wonder about the impact of the muggy weather on the artworks. That’s when Abna says, there is more to venue preparation than getting the space physically ready, the temperature for instance is a factor.
Seated from left (first row) Arjun Nair, Pranav PJ, Akshay Dev, and Deepak Johnny; (middle row, from right) Ashad PS, Neeraj Bhavansingh, Abna C Azad, Jinsha PK, and Fatimath Safna K; (top row from left) Isha Siraj , Amu Josephina Mohan, Sharanya Haridas, Anantha Krishnan and Aysha Manna from the production team of the Kochi Muziris Biennale 2025
| Photo Credit:
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
Says Akshay Dev, an art conservator and a member of the production team, “The temperature, humidity, the relative humidity…the fluctuation have all to be factored in when getting a venue ready. These factors are specific to each medium. My job is to create the ‘ideal condition’ for the artworks in order to keep them intact by creating buffer zones between the artwork and the wall. Then there are artworks like Otobong Nkanga’s work which would self-sustain.”
He knows what each artist’s work will be and the conditions it would require. Live reading of temperature is done to decide how to intervene to create the ‘ideal condition’. The intervention could be a dehumidifier or industrial level exhausts or air-conditioning.
With barely three weeks to go, the pace of work has gained speed. Six artists are already in town working on their artworks, each assisted by a volunteer.
It is fascinating to listen to this young team talk about how these seemingly lifeless, forgotten warehouses and godowns will transform, Cinderella-like, and come alive as art galleries worthy of world class art.
The Kochi Muziris Biennale opens on December 12, 2025 and will run for three months till April, 2026
