Art and Global South: ‘Playing Venice’ at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB)

Author(s)

Manuela Ciotti

Abstract

This article employs artifacts from the KMB's "material culture" as a lens into this institution's branding process and, within it, its interaction with the Venice Biennale. It analyzes larger questions about the career of the biennale cultural form as it re-territorializes in a new location that is added to the art world map "in progress." Historically, geographical location has been crucial for many biennales in the Global South to articulate their origin, identity, and claims vis-a-vis the global art world. Moreover, biennale proliferation especially in the South has produced cartographic re-imaginings aiming to destabilize the "center- periphery" configuration of the art world map. The article shows that the KMB does not reiterate ideological standings put forward by Southern biennales but crafts its positionality on different grounds. These entail simultaneously anchoring the KMB to histories of circulation in and out of South India tracing back at least two millennia and strategically weaving a relation with the archetypical Venice Biennale in the present.

Organisation(s)

Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology

Journal

New Global Studies

Volume

14

Pages

327-351

No. of pages

25

ISSN

2194-6566

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1515/ngs-2020-0043

Publication date

12-2020

Peer reviewed

Yes

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

504017 Cultural anthropology, 504009 Ethnology

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

General Social Sciences, Economics, Econometrics and Finance(all)

Portal url

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/222b2f5e-3f02-44ba-a08e-4adeb47044f8