Kochi-Muziris Biennale
For the Time Being
Multiple locations, Kochi
Dec 12, 2025–Mar 31, 2026

The tender, somewhat speculative title “For the Time Being” is the mantle that nurtures the breadth of projects scaffolded by the sixth Kochi-Muziris Biennale, curated by Nikhil Chopra with HH Art Spaces. The distinctive nature of this cultural gathering, which launched on December 12, 2012, was defined from the outset by Bose Krishnamachari (the former president of the Kochi Biennale Foundation) in the inspired determination that the curator is always to be an artist. Chopra’s own practice in durational and site-responsive performance was resonant throughout the biennale, given the abundance of performative projects as well as the honest acknowledgement that art exists in a state of flux and becoming. In Chopra’s words, the biennale was “an invitation to embrace process as methodology.”

This strategy played out with charged energy during the opening week through multiple performances, including durational live actions by Panjeri Artists’ Union, a sound-based performance by Mónica de Miranda, Mandeep Raikhy’s frenetic choreographic work Hallucinations of an Artifact (2023), and Statues Must Die (2025), a performance-lecture by Naeem Mohaiemen and Mallika Taneja. The intention continued throughout the biennale with daily Instagram posts announcing performances and events. Working within what Chopra describes as “friendship economies,” 65 biennale artists were presented alongside hundreds more under the aegis of eight associated exhibition platforms and programs, including the Students’ Biennale, Invitations, Collaterals, and Special Projects. Only six of the 20-plus venues were ticketed. With a budget a fraction of its international cousins, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale—also known as the “People’s Biennale” and the “Artists’ Biennale”—has quickly become the largest contemporary art festival in India, serving as an open and dynamic gathering space for artists and thinkers across the region. Conceived with the local Kerala community as well as domestic and international visitors in mind, the event attracted 160,000 attendees in the first 20 days.

Still image of MANDEEEP RAIKHY’s performance Hallucinations of an Artifact, 2023, at SMS Hall, Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2025–26. Courtesy the Kochi Biennale Foundation.

This sixth iteration required considered forethought, particularly after the pandemic’s suppression of the 2020 edition and organizational challenges that hampered the 2023 rendition. Chopra’s astute reading of what was needed in 2025 informed his process-based thematic. The biennale’s name references the long-flooded gateway port town of Muziris on the Malabar Coast that thrived from the first century BCE to the fifth century CE—this spirit of international exchange and Kochi’s past as a locus for cosmopolitanism have anchored the project from the outset.

Acclaimed artists associated with the region were featured alongside leading figures from elsewhere, such as Adrián Villar Rojas, Tino Seghal, and Nari Ward, accumulatively offering rich experiential narratives for audiences through many commissioned and site-responsive works. Among the eight venues of the core exhibition, Aspinwall House was the most densely installed, while the new Island Warehouse on Willingdon Island was the most ambitious. Younger voices were ever-present: Ratna Gupta’s poetic sculptures, knitted tapestries, and embroideries drew attention, while Faiza Hasan’s eloquent metal floor drawing of tidal foam evoking the ebb and flow of memory was in perfect concert with the Arabian Sea on view through the window. These glimpses of waterways provided a cadence throughout the biennale journey. As Kirtika Kain’s suspended sheets made of copper plates, jute sacks, and cotton explore the inheritance of the Dalit diaspora, Biraaj Dodiya’s DOOM ORGAN (2025) incorporates clinical steel apparatus, stretchers, paintings, and photographs in an unsettling juxtaposition between the stasis of the mortuary and the dynamism of a competitive sports field.

Installation view of BIRAAJ DODIYA’s DOOM ORGAN, 2025, mixed media, at Coir Godown, Aspinwall House, Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2025–26. Courtesy the Kochi Biennale Foundation.

Long-form video marked a strong presence with two particularly powerful three-channel works at Aspinwall House. Pallavi Paul’s Alaq (2025) charts the fatal impact of the zoonotic Nipah virus, which is still active in Kerala. Sheba Chhachhi and Janet Price’s Beauty/Pain (2025) delivers a potent embodied account of the global pharmaceutical industry and its ancient, alchemic, and economic histories, while capturing its reality for those living with chronic pain. Elsewhere, in SMS Hall, Naeem Mohaiemen showcased his conjunctural single-channel film A Missing Can of Film (2025), paying homage to Zahir Raihan, a filmmaker and novelist who went missing soon after the end of the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971.

Island Warehouse registered a significant milestone for the biennale, as it offered a vast industrial space that allowed the curator to orchestrate works at scale. Alongside Marina Abramović’s imposing video At the Waterfall (2003)—casting a blanket of sound emanating from the chants of 108 Tibetan monks and nuns—were projects by younger artists, including Arti Kadam’s exquisite trompe l’oeil sculpted timber forms, a monumental painting series Retrieve (2016– ) by Himanshu Jamod that metaphorically addresses the life cycle of merchant ships, and Dineo Seshee Bopape’s sound-based installation of domed architectonic enclosures in earth and animal dung, exploring terrestrial and ethereal realms.

Installation views of IBRAHIM MAHAMA’s Parliament of Ghosts, 2017– , at the Anand Warehouse, Mattancherry, Kochi, 2025. Courtesy the Kochi Biennale Foundation.

Two outstanding pieces, both extensions of ongoing series, were displayed at Anand Warehouse. Kulpreet Singh’s breathtaking single-channel video Indelible Black Marks...

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