A Visitor’s Confession: I Didn’t Get the Biennale

The Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2025 did not speak to me. Or perhaps it spoke in a dialect I was never taught.

The Biennale is an international exhibition of contemporary art held in Kochi from Dec to March every two years. I seldom understood modern art, let alone postmodern and other species. So I never cared to visit this exhibition in the past. However, when many people, particularly blogger-friends, started asking why I never visited it, I decided to go. After all, the Biennale is the largest art exhibition in India and the biggest contemporary art festival in Asia. I should visit at least once in my life, shouldn’t I? That’s how Maggie and I found ourselves in the Aspinwall House at Fort Kochi.

Aspinwall is one of the many venues of the show. It will take you weeks to visit all the venues and we confined ourselves to just one. And it left both of us puzzled: are we both so illiterate when it comes to painting and sculpture?

The very first chamber we entered contained art from a state whose language is unfamiliar to us: Assam or West Bengal, we guessed looking at the script. Let me present an overview of some of the paintings there as well as a couple of specific paintings.

There was no curatorial note at all anywhere. Just the paintings. Not a soul who can answer your queries. Not even the names of the artists. Of course, art is to be observed and absorbed. Neither Maggie nor I could absorb anything. We walked on from chamber to chamber, watching the great works of art and wondering what they meant.

At one place where the images meant something to me because of their realism as well as connection with my upbringing, I took a few pics.

Maggie joins a Christian home in the Fest

This reminded me of a seminary I studied at

I heard a school girl telling her family members, “I understood everything.” I turned back and looked at her – and noticed the sarcasm on her face. I wasn’t the only baffled visitor.

I was entering the Aspinwall House for the first time. It is usually closed. It was originally built around 1867 by a British trader, John H Aspinwall for shipping spices, tea and rubber from Kochi to England. A devastating fire which destroyed a large area of Fort Kochi in 1889 did not spare Aspinwall either. It was rebuilt, however. Now it is a primary site for the Biennale.

As Maggie and I sat outside the building to take a break, I realised that history fascinated me a lot more than paintings and sculpture. The eminent contemporary artists did not speak to me, but the Aspinwall House did. Its air was still redolent of spices and condiments.

Who is the contemporary artist really speaking to? That question arose in me again and again. Is the mysteriousness or obfuscation intentional? Is the ambiguity enriching for some visitors at least? Or merely intimidating, as in my case?

Neither Maggie nor I wished to visit more venues.