KBF Opens Invitations Programme Ghetto Biennale

KOCHI:
The Kochi Biennale Foundation (KBF) celebrated its opening of Ghetto Biennale with Spectres of History (2025), the exhibition presented by Atis Rezistans as part of the Invitations programme, in St Andrews Parish Hall, Fort Kochi.

Spectres of History (2025) features Haitian art by Atis Rezistans, a dynamic, majority class group of artists working in the Grand Rue neighbourhood of downtown Port-au-Prince, Haiti; alongside collaborative works from the Ghetto Biennale, revealing how storytelling is entwined with performing the divine.

Growing up amid survivalist recycling, these artists transform engine parts, TV sets, motherboards, medical detritus, and scrap wood into radical sculptural assemblages. Their works draw on African heritage, Vodou practice, revolutionary history, and dystopian sci-fi imaginaries.

Material choices, shaped by economic necessity and creative vision, form a playful new language; bike tyres become wings, pistons become penises, springs become ribs. A new Adam emerges from post-industrial waste, haunting the landscape of globalisation. Some artists incorporate human bones; a practice rooted in Haitian Vodou’s reverence for ancestors and the inseparable worlds of the living and the dead. The exhibition examines the agency of the Haitian Revolution, explores knowledge systems of Haitian majority cultures, and challenges global art institutions and hierarchies.

Atis Rezistans (Resistance Artists) is a shifting community of experienced, mature artists, primarily sculptors and a range of younger emerging artists, some of whom are working in sculpture and painting, but also, more recently, photography, video, music, slam poetry, writing and performance. Much of their work relates to Haitian history and religion which is deep-rooted in their culture. They often work in harsh and difficult conditions.

In December 2009, Atis Rezistans hosted the first Ghetto Biennale, devised as a response to lack of international mobility for majority class artists which acts as a barrier between them and the global art world.

The Ghetto Biennale issues an international call for artists to apply to come to their neighbourhood to make work and work with the Haitian artists.

It attempts to momentarily transform spaces, dialogues and relationships considered unthinkable and unworkable, into complex, transcultural, creative platforms. Over the last 12 years, Atis Rezistans have hosted over 300 international artists and formed many strong collaborative bonds.