Kochi-Muziris Biennale 6: For The Time Being

Aspinwall House, Fort Kochi. Courtesy Kochi Biennale Foundation.

Kochi-Muziris Biennale 6: For The Time Being

Fort Kochi, Mattancherry, Willingdon Island & Ernakulam, India
12 December 2025 – 31 March 2026
Curator: Nikhil Chopra with HH Art Spaces
kochimuzirisbiennale.org

We are particularly pleased to share this announcement as the Kochi-Muziris Biennale has recently rejoined IBA as an institutional member following a restructuring of its Foundation and an overhaul of its team to reaffirm its key role within the global biennial community and its commitment to its local community and the international art world.

The sixth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, titled For The Time Being, opened to the public on 12 December 2025 across 29 venues in Fort Kochi, Mattancherry, Willingdon Island, and Ernakulam. Bringing together 66 artists from over 25 countries, the biennial is shaped by the curatorial vision of Nikhil Chopra, and unfolds in close dialogue with a constellation of performances, exhibitions, and discursive programmes led by Director of Programmes Mario D’Souza, responding to Kochi’s distinctive geographical, social, and cultural history.

Embracing process as methodology, this edition places friendship economies at the core of its curatorial framework. The exhibition understands bodies as landscapes of time, vessels of labour, joy, and loss, and invites visitors to reflect on “embodied histories of those that came before us and continue to live within us in the form of cells, stories and techniques.”

The international exhibition opened across eight venues on 12 December, marked by a ceremonial flag-hoisting at Aspinwall House, Fort Kochi, followed by the formal inauguration at Parade Ground, Fort Kochi, led by the Honourable Chief Minister of Kerala, Shri Pinarayi Vijayan. The opening celebrations culminated in a public concert by Shanka Tribe, featuring Neha Nair, Resmi Satheesh, and Shahabaz Aman.

The opening week also included performances by participating artists Mónica de Miranda, Zarina Muhammad, Smitha M Babu, Naeem Mohaiemen, and Mandeep Raikhy, among others.

The Kochi Biennale Foundation’s key programmes: Invitations, Students’ Biennale, Art By Children, and Edam, opened on 13 December 2025 and run through 31 March 2026, expanding the Biennale’s engagement with education, intergenerational exchange, and cultural ecosystems.

Founded in 2022, the Invitations Programme recognises artists, collectives, and institutions whose practices sustain cultural ecosystems across the Global South. Opening across seven venues, participating institutions include:

• Alice Yard (Trinidad and Tobago)

• Alkazi Theatre Archives, in collaboration with Alkazi Collection of Photography (India)

• Bienal das Amazônias (Brazil)

• Conflictorium (India)

• Dar Jacir for Art and Research (Palestine)

• Ghetto Biennale (Haiti)

• Khoj International Artists’ Association (India)

• Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Panamá (Panama)

• Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute (Kenya)

• Packet (Sri Lanka)

• ruangrupa / OK.Video (Jakarta)

Students’ Biennale 2025–26

Opening at VKL Warehouse, Mattancherry, the Students’ Biennale presents projects by student artists from over 175 art institutions across India. Curated by seven curators and collectives working across seven regions—including Angaa Art Collective, Ashok Vish, Chinar Shah, GABAA, Khursheed Ahmad, Salman Bashir Baba, Savyasachi Anju Prabir, Secular Art Collective, Seethal CP, Sudheesh Kottembram, and Sukanya Deb—this edition foregrounds nourishment, peer-led learning, and artistic ecosystems beyond market- and grant-driven models.

Edam

Curated by Aishwarya Suresh and K. M. Madhusudhanan, Edam unfolds across three venues on Bazaar Road, Mattancherry, featuring 36 artists and collectives from Kerala and its diaspora. The exhibition explores contemporary practices shaped by lived experience, intergenerational dialogue, and local lineages of making and thinking. A special project dedicated to Vivan Sundaram, Six Stations of a Life Pursued (2022), will be presented at Cube Art Space, Mattancherry.

The Residency Programme, opened on 13 December, presents works developed through One Thousand Seas, a long-term research initiative emerging from the Kochi Biennale Foundation’s engagement with oceanic worldings and narratives that challenge Western, colonial, postcolonial, and contemporary frameworks.

The Biennale also introduces the Island Mural Project, extending art and ideas into public spaces in conversation with communities and regional histories.

Performances and Public Programmes

Throughout the opening week and beyond, the Biennale hosted performances, conversations, lecture-presentations, and concerts. Highlights included performances by Mehfil-e-Sama’a, The F16s, Nanjiyamma and Team, Yuva Kerala Chavittu Nadaka Kalasamithi, Mehboob Memorial Orchestra, and Karinthalakoottam, presenting a range of folk, musical, and theatrical traditions rooted in Kerala’s cultural landscape.

The sixth Kochi-Muziris Biennale affirms the Biennale’s position as a major platform for contemporary artistic practice rooted in place while operating within a global constellation of ideas, solidarities, and shared urgencies—an approach closely aligned with the International Biennial Association’s commitment to exchange, plurality, and sustainability.

For full details on participating artists, venues, and programming, visit kochimizirisbiennale.org and follow the Kochi Biennale Foundation on social media.