October 11th, 2025 — Held every two years, the sixth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India’s largest contemporary art exhibition, titled For the Time Being, is slated to run from December 12th, 2025 to March 31st, 2026. This year’s festival, curated by Nikhil Chopra, features 66 projects from 25 countries and includes an international exhibition, talks, performances, and workshops across various venues in Kochi. Among the featured artists are Minam Apang (CRF 2013), Shiraz Bayjoo (CRF 2023), Bhasha Chakrabarti (CRF 2025), and Biraaj Dodiya (CRF 2022).
e-flux writes in their announcement of the event, “This edition is oriented around the body, a bearer of memory and materiality, a site of encounter, and a witness to temporality. Within the curatorial framework, the body extends metaphorically into the landscape itself, to Kochi, a coastal port city built on movements of every kind—human and non-human—whose fragmented geography is stitched together by rivers, canals and backwaters, and its sediments borne by waves of colonial incursions, maritime trade, migrations, socio-political upheavals, and textures of its communal life.”
The curatorial team notes, “Our invitation to companions was to work with Kochi’s climates, conditions, and resource realities; to make time, think nimbly, and collaborate locally. Around 50 new commissions are set across many first-time venues in neighbourhoods animated with trade, people, and movement. We draw from the past editions and their lives, and continue to see the exhibition as a growing organism constantly nourished by ideas, emotions, and actions. We also hold space for grief and mourning through this transformative time”.
Over the coming weeks, we look forward to learning more about these artists’ shows!