VISITING THE BIENNALE

An old warehouse, the space purposely intertwines with the art works to create an embodied experience to the audience.

Like most venues of the Kochi Muziris Biennale, the Mocha Art Café has a historical use as a Dutch warehouse. It however has the unique privilege of neighbouring the Paradesi Synagogue, the oldest Jewish house of worship in the Commonwealth, and used to house the Rabbis who worked here. In 1915 the building was acquired by the spice trader Abdul Karim Mohammad who used it as a warehouse for his flourishing business. Nearly a hundred years later his grandson Mr Junaid Sulaiman, a businessman himself and lawyer by training, began restoring the centuries-old structure into an art café.

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Situated a few hundred metres down the Calvathy Boat Jetty is a two-hundred-year-old heritage building, which was closely associated with the bustling port activity of Fort Kochi.  The heritage hotel that one sees today, WelcomHeritage Azora by Ayatana, Kochi, was originally set up as a colonial bank and later functioned as a courthouse in the post-independence period. Unsurprisingly the building has also operated as a warehouse for coffee and spice exports in recent times. The structure is now a modern luxury hotel and is an active participant not only in the hospitality sector of the trade city but also in the art scene, opening up as a venue for the satellite exhibitions of the Kochi Muziris Biennale.

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Located close to the Ernakulam South Railway station, the Durbar Hall and its grounds have been the only KMB venue on the mainland, outside the Fort Kochi and Mattancherry zone. The building has migrated from its original use as the royal court of the erstwhile Maharaja of Cochin to assume varied functions as the office of the National Cadet Corps (NCC) to the office of the Pallivasal Hydro-Electric Project and later as an archaeology museum. In 1992, the building was entrusted to the Lalitha Kala Akademi, who first occupied the upper floor to open the Gallery of Contemporary Art in 1989. Extensive renovation done by the Kochi Muziris Biennale Foundation and the Government of Kerala has rendered the Dutch-inspired architecture of the Durbar Hall into a state-of-the-art venue for the KMB.

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The Kashi art cafe and gallery is one of the oldest private galleries in Kerala . It was established in 1997 and has been vital in promoting the artists of Kerala ever since. The former residential space set a precedent to the art scene here by lending itself to host art residencies and exhibitions.  The biennale from its inception in 2012 has been using the space as a key venue.

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The Kashi Town House is a Portuguese building which is over a hundred years old and has been an exhibition venue for the last three editions of the KMB . When not occupied by the Biennale it continues to be used as an art residency and a gallery.

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Following their arrival in Fort Kochi, in the late 17^th century when they had set up trade by the name “Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC)” (Dutch East India Company) a clutch of warehouses arose along the waterfront in Fort Kochi to facilitate its smooth functioning. The Dutch Warehouse was built in the 18th century conforming to the prevalent architectural typology of the waterfront warehouse, with a courtyard, storerooms and a boat jetty to load and unload wares. It was undertaken by the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP), Bangalore as a conservation project and converted to a collateral exhibition space for the KMB in 2018.  

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On the Kochangadi Road is located the 19^th-century Thangal Kunju Musaliar Warehouse, eponymously named after the legendary Malayali businessman.  It was developed to form URU Art Harbour by artist and co-founder of the Kochi Muziris Biennale Riyas Komu and Zoya Riyas in 2016, as a centre for artistic and cultural critique. The building and its present preoccupations hark back to the age-old ambition and enterprise, and pluralistic cultural abundance brought by Kochi’s maritime history. During the Biennale six of its warehouses are turned into venues for exhibitions.

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Trivandrum Warehouse a charming, old warehouse, deceptively large and at least a hundred and seventy years old. On the one end, the building opens up into the narrow streets of Jew Town and on the other it faces  Willingdon Island.

The warehouse was first owned by George, Peter and Balthasur Reinhart, Swiss inhabitants of Winterthur, in the confederation of Switzerland, who conducted business in a partnership under the name of 'Volkart Brothers' at Kochi. The company exported colonial goods such as tea, oil, coffee, cocoa, spices and imported soap, paper, matches, watches, textiles among other industrial goods into the Indian subcontinent. The warehouse itself is built of granite and ‘kacchi kal’, a stone used typically to make ballasts for 19th century ships . 

In November 1954 the warehouse was bought  by an individual named Kadarkutti. It was rented out soon after to the Kerala Government to house the offices of Coirfed who then vacated a few years ago to return the property to Kadarkutti’s successors.

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The KVN Arcade, as it is known now is a former 1900s pepper ‘godown’ which presents special spatial conditions with its elongated architecture, with comparatively low-height rooms and sunlit alleyways between the buildings. The entrance passage, the upper storeys of this structure with larger room height and the narrow courtyard provide a spatial sequence that alternates between light and dark, compact and expansive for the exhibition spaces that occupy them during the Students’ Biennale.

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The Vallabhdas Khanjibhai Ltd. (VKL) WarehouseGujarati-owned owned enterprise seasonally transforms into a venue for the Kochi Muziris Biennale. The double-storied waterfront building was built in 1953 and is situated on Bazaar Road. One enters through the unassuming gateway to discover that it remains partially functional as a warehouse for spices and pulses when three of its warehouse rooms and courtyard are converted to exhibition spaces for the Students’ Biennale.

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The long double-storied building owned by Arman & Co. is situated in the market street environs of the Bazaar Road and was once a warehouse and administrative office used by the Dutch traders. It is one of the many warehouses that have lent itself to the unique spatial dynamics born of an unlikely blend of spice trade and art exhibition. The Arman Building continues to be partially used as a godown even as the upper storeys and the courtyard are transformed into an exhibition space during the Kochi Muziris Biennale. It has been used as an exhibition venue from the first edition onwards and in recent years it has featured works from the Students’ Biennale.

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The building was a warehouse once owned by Gujarati families and part of it continues to live the spice trade legacy. Working with dereliction and decay, the warehouse aesthetic with its bare-brick walls and exposed timber beams have been carried over in its authentic state to house the artworks in the Biennale.  Previously this space has featured the murals of Prabhakar Pachpute and the woodcuts of the Malaysian art collective Pangrok Sulap.

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In the year 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral the first Portuguese sailor arrived in Kochi, following the newly discovered sea route by Vasco De Gama in 1498. Dismissed by the erstwhile Zamorin and the Arab merchants who had a trade monopoly there, Cabral’s fleet sought a better welcome in Kochi. The King of Kochi found in the Portuguese a useful ally against the Zamorin of Calicut and thus a treaty was signed between the two parties which granted the Portuguese to set up a trade base in Kochi. This friendship marked the beginning of the first European settlement in India until it was supplanted by the arrival of the Dutch in 1662. Cabral Yard commemorates the Portuguese sailor and has grown beyond its original signification of Portuguese presence in Kochi. The estate, now privately owned, has been one of the most vibrant venues of the Kochi Muziris Biennale since its inception in 2012. It continues to be the site of artistic experimentation and the primary interface for the public who engage with the KMB festival. In its previous editions, it has been the venue for the installations of Mumbaikar Shetty and US-based Afghan-origin Amanullah Mojadidi, Valsan Koorma Kolleri, Katrina Neiburga, Andris Eglitis, Sophie Dejode and Bertrand Lacombe and the Pavilion by architect Tony Joseph. In the 2018 edition of KMB, it was the venue for the Art Lab for the initiative Art by Children (ABC) and Koodaram: The Pavilion. 

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The building is popularly associated with the British merchant John H. Aspinwall and was historically used for the export of Kerala spices, tea, coffee and other goods. In addition to these, it is also believed to be in the boat-making business. According to local narratives, the business house was previously owned by two British brothers, and their business was salvaged and made profitable by Aspinwall who in 1867 offered to partner with the company and eventually own it. The 19^th century Aspinwall House is witness to the turn of tides during the British presence in India, as it saw the waning of the British East India Company to the coming of British-administered India with the support of the erstwhile Travancore Royal Family. Currently a private-owned property, it has survived the centuries unto the modern age, housing several functions including an English newspaper, as a popular film location and now one of the key venues of the Kochi Muziris Biennale.

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David Hall is the material remains of a live Indo-Dutch memory, that of the Hortus Malabaricus, the 12-volume study of tropical flora of Kerala, commissioned by the Dutch governor Hendrick Adriaan van Rheede tot Drakenstein who resided here. Although built around 1695 by the Dutch East India Company, the building gets its name from a later occupant, a Jewish businessman called David Koder. For the most part, it remains architecturally unaltered and continues to be maintained elegantly. The residence is now leased to CGH Earth and has been a dynamic venue for the Kochi Muziris Biennale. It remains active throughout the year with a café and gallery space and various multi-format cultural and artistic exchange.

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The Dutch-style ‘godown’ or warehouse, with its twin buildings and central courtyard, has grown to be one of the recognizable venues of the Kochi Muziris Biennale over the last decade. If once the waterfront property, situated on Calvathy Road has been thriving in the spice trade, in recent years it has been a live storehouse for artistic practice, housing memorable art installations and activities including the eponymous Pepper House Residency of the Kochi Muziris Biennale, a forerunner to the festival and the Laboratory of Visual Arts (LaVa), the travelling installation by Bose Krishnamachari, of nearly 1800 DVDs and about 5000 book titles on art, design and culture.  Today it also houses the Pepper House Café and a designer store which brings together homegrown products from across India.