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A stunning short documenting the ecological challenges of farming in the Punjab; an installation of 750 photographs showing every possible gesture of limbs working a loom; experimental tapestries of cotton and hand-spun wool; abstract paintings made of thread and wool, in a riot of colours, ranging from bright to subdued; a rural habitation in Malabar seen through the slim trunks of areca nut trees; surreal coastal landscapes in green; a corridor of mirrors with slightly distorting reflections; sea-surf on a wooden floor; gigantic milk cans on weather-beaten cycles; little portraits of women in moments of repose on a train; the notebook of a nun; floating quilts pieced together from the clothing of multiple generations – these are a few of my favourite artworks at the sixth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, spread over 22 venues in Fort Kochi, Mattancherry and Willingdon Island, in old and new warehouses. Titled ‘For the time being’, it is curated by Nikhil Chopra with HH Art Spaces.

In his Curator’s Note, Chopra expands on the theme thus: ‘We see the Kochi-Muziris Biennale as a gathering that is suspended in time. The scale of the exhibition makes us ponder what effort, toil, and work are. The Biennale is revealing to us that we don’t have to adhere to permanence – our role as actors in the cosmic calendar is “for the time being”.’

List of participating artists. Aspinwall, Fort Kochi. Photograph by author.

The Biennale was inaugurated on December 14, 2025 and will run until March 31, 2026. Visiting it in March inevitably meant avidly following the Biennale’s social media updates and reading up its coverage by art magazines and critics in the intervening months.

Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama’s interview in STIRworld was the most fascinating of them all. His installation, ‘Parliament of Ghosts’, in Anand Warehouse, deconstructs the colonial histories of two commodities placed in dialogue with each other – jute sacks and furniture, in the form of chairs. The sacks, sewn together and layered with stamps – to underline both trade in the food and spices that they once contained, and the labour that went into them – line the three walls of the installation as tapestries; while a huge eclectic collection of mended chairs, symbolising bureaucratic control and generational histories, are arranged under it to form the structure of the ghostly Parliament of the title. Both the sacks and the chairs have been sourced from Kochi itself – a historic port town that has witnessed successive waves of colonial settlements (Portuguese, Dutch and British) over centuries, enabled through trade, which in turn shaped its cosmopolitan character. 

‘Parliament of Ghosts’, conceived as a performative space, has been used as such in the duration of the Biennale. On the day and time of my visit in early March, however, perhaps in tune with the association of Holi, it became a site of love – with two pairs of young lovers obsessively taking photos of each other, and then requesting me to take a few of them together. I readily obliged; and extracted from them the quid pro quo of taking stills of mine sitting in vacant and pensive mood, imagining the ghosts of all my dear ones dead and gone, sitting around me in those chairs. That’s what that furniture did to me. I left the Parliament surprised at my response.

Anand Warehouse, which houses Mahama’s Parliament, is also the site of Jayashree Chakravarty’s Shelter: For the time being (2025), which is displayed along with several of her other works. The Kolkata-based artist is well known for her innovative mixed-media installations, and Shelter is yet another monumental example of that.

In it, long suspended scrolls are stitched together to form a hooded/encircled structure, with its surface constituted of organic materials (like jute, copper wire, dry grass) and imprinted with seeds and insects. It is an exploration of the interconnectedness of different kinds of organisms of the natural world and a generous conjuring of a primal shelter that can protect all. At a time when the world has gone mad, with the sanctity of all life in danger, I felt this artwork in particular resonated with hope and kindness.

Jayashree Chakravarty, ‘Shelter: For the Time Being’ (2025). Mixed media on multi........

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