In the pantheon of global contemporary art exhibitions, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB) occupies a distinctive position. Conceived in 2012 as an artist-initiated platform, it has steadily evolved into South Asia’s largest and most consequential engagement with international contemporary art, transforming the historic port city of Kochi, Kerala, into a vibrant cultural slab where ideas, histories, and artistic processes converge. The sixth edition of this extraordinary festival of creativity, titled ‘For the Time Being’, opened on December 12, 2025, and will be running through March 31, 2026, and promises a profound meditation on art’s situatedness in lived temporalities.
Conceptual Framework: Process, Presence, and the Temporality of Art
The curatorial framework for the 2025-26 Biennale is spearheaded by Nikhil Chopra, in collaboration with HH Art Spaces, an artist-led organisation based in Goa. This edition deliberately departs from the traditional paradigm of a biennale as a static exhibition cataloguing consummated works. Instead, it adopts a philosophy that foregrounds ‘process as methodology’, reframing the Biennale as a ‘living ecosystem’ that emphasizes duration, co-presence, interaction, and artistic relationality. Rather than privileging a central spectacle of finalized objects, this Biennale seeks to interrogate the very temporality of artistic work and its interplay with audiences and place.
The title “For the Time Being” itself invites reflection on temporality as both philosophical condition and material experience. Art, in this conception, is not merely represented or exhibited; it unfolds, evolves, and responds to its ambient context, positioning spectators not as passive consumers but as participants in ongoing processes of interpretation, negotiation, and meaning-making.
Spatial Imagination: Kochi as Culture Itself
Kochi’s urban geography is inseparable from its colonial and maritime past. A historic nexus of spice trade, migration, and cultural exchanges, the city embodies a sedimented history that resonates with the Biennale’s thematic emphasis on embedded temporality and collective memory. Underlying the curatorial vision is an implicit recognition of Kochi itself as a living archive, a city where colonial warehouses, canals, waterfronts, and heritage precincts constitute architectural layers of memory. These spatial inscriptions become active partners in the Biennale’s narrative, dissolving distinctions between exhibition space and cityscape.
Across multiple venues in ‘Fort Kochi, Mattancherry, Ernakulam, and even Willingdon Island’, the Biennale transforms infrastructure into an artscape, each location becoming a node in a broader experiential network. Such a dispersed model underscores a commitment to demystifying art and offering access through various spatial registers rather than limiting engagement to a singular institutional locus.
Artistic Constituency: Diversity, Dialogue, and Global Resonance
This edition brings together 66 artists and collectives from over 25 countries, constituting a diverse intersection of global perspectives and practices. The international roster testifies to the Biennale’s stature as a global cultural forum, where regional specificity and global artistic idioms converse. From established global practitioners to emergent voices, the Biennale orchestrates a constellation of artistic sensibilities, each contributing to an expansive dialogue around materiality, corporeality, narrative, performance, and socio-political exigencies.
In keeping with its ethos as a platform for intellectual and creative exchange, auxiliary programmes such as the Students’ Biennale, Invitations, Art By Children, and the Residency Programme deepen the Biennale’s reach into educational and participatory domains. These platforms cultivate intergenerational conversations and pedagogical engagement, reaffirming the belief that contemporary art is best understood not as a distant spectacle but as a living, pedagogical encounter.
Public Engagement and Cultural Ecology
The Biennale’s inauguration on December 12, 2025, was marked by an official ceremony led by Kerala’s Chief Minister, underscoring the event’s civic resonance and its role in cultural diplomacy. Beyond formal openings, the Biennale’s rhythm is animated by performances, talks, workshops, and film screenings that punctuate the quotidian life of Kochi. These modalities of engagement situate the Biennale as a public cultural ecology, one that interweaves fine art with communal rhythms, everyday urban life, and reflective discourse.
In an age where the consumption of art is often mediated by digital screens and market logics, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale’s insistence on embodiment of bodies, histories, and spatial experience serves as a vital corrective. It prompts us to witness art not only as finished artefacts but as animated encounters that accrue meaning through time and presence.
Towards an Art of Being and Becoming
As this sixth edition unfolds over more than three months, visitors are invited to traverse its terrain not as tourists but as participatory scholars, to observe, question, and engage with the mutable dialogues that the Biennale facilitates. In an era characterized by accelerated digital dissemination and ephemeral cultural consumption, ‘For the Time Being’ emphasizes endurance: the endurance of artistic inquiry, the endurance of collective reflection, and the endurance of place-based cultural imaginaries.
Through its expansive reach across venues, its embrace of process and temporality, and its synthesis of global and local artistic narratives, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale asserts a compelling proposition: that contemporary art, when imagined as a living field of experience, can transcend spectacle and become a potent site for both introspection and social connectivity.
