Kochi-Muziris Biennale Announces 6th Edition Titled “For the Time Being”

KOCHI:
The sixth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB), organised by the Kochi Biennale Foundation (KBF), will be titled ‘For the Time Being’. Curated by renowned artist Nikhil Chopra with HH Art Spaces, an artist-led organisation based out of Goa, the biennale will run for 110 days, from December 12, 2025, through March 31, 2026.

The KBF also announced the curatorial framework for KMB ’25. Alongside the international exhibition, the Biennale will feature a diverse programme of talks, performances, workshops, and film screenings, unfolding across various sites in Kochi. Key programme verticals include the Students’ Biennale, Invitations, Art By Children, the Residency Programme and the Collateral.

The curatorial note by Nikhil Chopra states that the sixth edition of the KMB will embrace process as methodology and position ‘friendship economies’ as the very scaffolding of the exhibition. Moving away from the conventional Biennale model of a singular, central exhibition-event, the sixth edition is envisioned as a living ecosystem “one where each element shares space, time, and resources, and grows in dialogue with each other.”

Chopra is an internationally renowned multidisciplinary artist whose practice interweaves performance, drawing, photography, sculpture and installation. KMB is India’s first and South Asia’s longest-running contemporary art biennale.

KBF Chair Dr Venu V said the biennale, over its past editions, has consistently risen in stature, attracting artworks from both celebrated and emerging talents from India and abroad.

“Organising such an event needs meticulous planning and strategies. We have introduced important organisational changes in the Kochi Biennale Foundation, and we are confident to make a grand success of the sixth edition of the biennale. For both commoners and connoisseurs, it will offer a dynamic experience.”

Bose Krishnamachari, President of Kochi-Muziris Biennale, said that Nikhil Chopra’s emphasis on durational exhibitions and performances will be a highlight of the sixth edition. “Those visiting the biennale will be introduced to an immersive atmosphere, featuring spectacular artworks and site-responsive installations. The event will also offer abundant opportunities to engage with artists and fellow art enthusiasts, and witness the layered cultural life of Kochi, a city where global and local currents converge and diverge all at once.”

Here is the text of ‘curatorial vision’ released:

Curatorial vision
The sixth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale is an invitation to embrace process as methodology, and to place the friendship economies that have long nurtured artist-led initiatives as the very scaffolding of the exhibition.

We move away from the idea of the Biennale as a singular, central exhibition-event, and instead envision it as a living ecosystem; one where each element shares space, time, and resources, and grows in dialogue with each other. In Kochi, a historic port city where trade once connected distant worlds, we begin with our site and region to engage in dialogue with emerging global perspectives. This rootedness allows us to resist the pressures of the conventional biennale model as a finished spectacle, and instead shape something that is evolving, responsive, and alive.

Our inquiry begins with the body–chemical, tender, marked by memory and intimacy. We see the body as a landscape of time, a vessel of labour, joy, and loss. From these bodies emerge processes that transform into other bodies as extensions of ourselves through which meaning is carried and reality reimagined. In this convergence, we invite a deeper awareness of being, and plant seeds for a more caring and conscious future.

Our bodies are not entirely ours; they are cultivated like landscapes, by those that tend to it with care or its lack. They bear witness and record experiences as scars and marks, and time as lines.

Our bodies hold hope and grief, whilst seeking love and joy for survival and sustainability. This edition of the biennale is also an invitation to think through embodied histories, of those that came before us and continue to live within us in the form of cells, stories and techniques.

Aware of the ecological, political, and emotional precarity of Kochi, not as a limitation but as a generative force, we let its rhythms shape how we work. We invite artists to seek resonances across geography and time, to trace shared memories, mirrored struggles, and new affinities rooted in empathy and deep listening.

We would much rather learn from the complexities of human history, choosing to confront the contradictions and fragilities of our present. While we recognise that art alone may not change the world, we believe when cultures collide, that encounter can, at the very least, provoke conversations. This constant unsettling can possibly break the static silence, even if temporarily.

In the aftermath of a global pandemic, we are more attuned to the space between performance and witnessing, between presence and absence. The saturation of digital images and information has distanced us from the world and from each other. In these times of war and regimes, what does it mean to watch and witness? What might a call to action mean or look like in a world desensitised by voyeuristic tendencies and mediated content production?

Many forms of liveness—performances, actions and conversations—will bring alive the 110 days of the Biennale. Durational works that blur process and presentation will invite audiences into embodied, participatory moments, challenging a static exhibition. We believe this is what a Biennale can be: a space of aliveness, presence, and communion. A place where people come together, not just to see art, but to be with it, and with each other.

The full artist list will be announced in October.