Kochi-Muziris Biennale Announces Sixth Edition Programmes and Exhibitions

The Kochi biennale foundation is delighted to announce its programmes and exhibitions for the sixth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. Emerging from the idea of the biennale as a shared ecosystem where multitudes coexist without a nucleus, we ask: how can we speak to the global in local tongues?

Our imagination is situated within the realities and possibilities of our sites and contexts. We seek affinitive alignments and embrace slowness. This, we believe, would allow conversations and forms to grow, ferment, decay, or transform; to foreground relationships of nourishment and active care. We hold space for joy and grief, whilst learning from forms of gathering and being together. We acknowledge that it is indeed unfeasible to conjure imaginations of a world without acknowledging the structures of violence and othering, and the unfolding of a genocide.

Conversations, film, food, music, theater, workshops, and choreographies unfold over 109 days, led by Mario D’Souza, Director of Programmes, with Ananthan Suresh, Mashoor Ali, and Rebecca Martin.

D’Souza notes, “To think with people is a gift in this fractured, polarised world. It is vital to find joy, share a meal, grieve, and come to terms with loss. Resilience, in the face of adversity and forms of systemic erasure, is one of humanity’s greatest strengths. We honor caregivers and those that keep hope alive in our broken world.”

The Biennale Pavilion commission for 2025-26 was awarded to Senthil Kumar Doss for Primordial, which was selected by a jury composed of Aric Chen, Bose Krishnamachari, Radhika Desai, Shimul Javeri Kadri, and Tony Joseph.

The Pavilion is the beating heart of the biennale, activated by gatherings, events, and happenings. These include “Nothing will remain other than the thorn lodged in the throat of this world,” a lecture-performance by Noor Abed and Haig Aivazian; a presentation of Somnath Waghmare’s cinematic work; “Imagining Zomia,” a conversation with practitioners, filmmakers, historians and artists to re-examine the highlands of Central, South, and Southeast Asia beyond their framing as peripheral or stateless zones; “Statues Must Die” by Naeem Mohaiemen; “(Towards) Crip Aesthetics: Disability as Method” by Resting Museum engages with crip aesthetics as a mode of resistance to able-bodied and able-minded norms, foregrounding lived experience as a site of theory and art-making; “Eelam Dialogues” with Meena Kandasamy and Nimmi Gowrinathan, and presentations of films by the Dharamshala International Film festival, and the Palestine Film Institute; “History of Long