Eliana Willis

There’s more art to see beyond the United States and Europe, and we’ve rounded up some of the most exciting shows debuting in the new year. From a spotlight on female designers to a survey of the Belle Epoque in South Korea, here’s what we have our eye on around the world in 2023.

“Undercurrent: The New Future of Japanese Contemporary Art”Powerlong Art Museum, Shanghaithrough January 29, 2023
Courtesy of the Powerlong Art Museum.
Described as “a concentrated display of the new generation of Japanese artists in China,” this show features around 100 artworks by 16 emerging and established Japanese contemporary artists. The group came of age in the 1990s, and is often associated with the country’s “Lost 20 years,” when Japan’s economy cratered.

“MMCA Lee Kun-hee Collection: Monet, Picasso, and the Masters of the Belle Epoque”National Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, South Koreathrough February 26, 2023
Camille Pissarro, The Cereal Market in Pontoise (1893). Courtesy of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, South Korea.
Nearly 100 works donated to the museum by the heirs of late Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee are on view in this sprawling exhibition focused on luminaries of Paris’s “Belle Epoque.” The show is divided into four sections: “Pissarro and Gauguin, Two Masters in Paris Who Met as Mentor and Mentee”; “Monet, Renoir, and Picasso, Masters Who Blossomed through Friendship and Respect”; “Picasso, Miró, and Dalí, Spanish Painters in Paris”; and “Picasso and Chagall, Masters Who Captured Beautiful Moments in Life.”

“McQueen: Mind, Mythos, Muse“National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australiathrough April 16, 2023
A selection of Alexander McQueen’s designs featured in “Mind, Mythos, Muse.” Courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria.
Fashion designer Alexander McQueen remains a source of endless discussion, even more than 12 years after his death in 2010. The exhibition features artwork drawn from the collections of the National Gallery and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art displayed alongside McQueen’s own designs “that help to illuminate the interdisciplinary impulse that defined his career.”

“Egon Schiele from the Collection of the Leopold Museum–Young Genius in Vienna 1900”Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, JapanJanuary 26–April 9, 2023
Egon Schiele, Self-Portrait with Chinese Lantern Plant (1912). Courtesy of the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum & the Leopold Art Museum.
After three decades, the work of Egon Schiele is returning to Tokyo in this exhibition tracing “the dramatic life of a genius who died too young.” The show features 50 artworks by Schiele accompanied by some 120 works by other Viennese artists, including Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, and Richard Gerstl, to tell a comprehensive story of fin-de-siècle Viennese art.

“Liu Kuo-sung: Experimentation as Method“National Gallery SingaporeJanuary 13–November 26, 2023
Liu Kuo-Sung, The Earth, Our Home (B) (2004). Courtesy of Christie’s Images, Ltd.
The forthcoming exhibition will be the largest show dedicated to Chinese artist Liu Kuo-Sung by a public Singaporean institution, with more than 60 paintings and 150 of the artist’s personal objects. Best known for his expressive ink paintings, Kuo-Sung helped to modernize the practice with his “Space” series, which incorporates photographs of the Earth taken by U.S. astronauts on the Apollo 8 mission in 1968.

“Painting Love in the Louvre Collections“National Art Center, TokyoMarch 1–June 12, 2023
François Gérard, Cupid and Psyche (1767). Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre) /Tony Querrec / distributed by AMF-DNPartcom.

Art aficionados certainly love the Louvre, but this expansive show in Japan’s capital city delves into love at the Louvre—specifically 74 paintings from the legendary Paris museum’s collection that display amorousness in classical European art ranging from the chaste to the blush-worthy. Go with your special someone, or maybe meet them there.

“Parall(elles): A History of Women in Design”Montreal Museum of Fine ArtsFebruary 18–May 28, 2023
Dorothy Hafner, Fred Flintstone, Flash Gordon and Marie Antoinette coffee service (form); Blue Loop with Headdress (decoration), (1984). MMFA, Liliane and David M. Stewart Collection. Photo Annie Fafard.
Designs by American and Canadian women are the subject of this sprawling exhibition, organized in collaboration with the Stewart Program for Modern Design. Objects from the mid-19th century through today highlight the breadth of styles and media that female designers made while marginalized in social, political, and personal settings. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) has also commissioned ceramicist Molly Hatch to create a giant mosaic of 198 hand-painted plates that will take over the exhibition pavilion.

“Ningiukulu Teevee: Chronicles for the Curious“National Gallery of OntarioOpens January 14, 2023
Ningiukulu Teevee, Shaman Revealed (2007). © Ningiukulu Teevee, courtesy Dorset Fine Arts. 2008/17.
Kinngait (Cape Dorset)-based Ningiukulu Teevee is a graphic artist whose work first debuted at the National Gallery of Ontario only two years ago. Her “bold color, unique perspectives, and meticulous graphic style” have cemented her as a favorite among collectors.
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This year may lack big headliners like Documenta and the Venice Biennale, but there is certainly no shortage of showstoppers. We scoured institutional programs across the continent and selected 17 shows set to open between January and June that we think will be the talks of the town.
LuYang Vibratory Field Kunsthalle Basel, BaselJanuary 20—May 21, 2023
LuYang, Digital Descending, ARoS, Aarhus, 2021. Exhibition view. Courtesy LuYang and Société, Berlin.
Set to be the visionary Shanghai-born artist’s first show in Switzerland, “Vibratory Field,” will feature a range of LuYang’s signature body of work, which ranges from video animation, avatars, and video games. The show, according to organizers, is “a spectacular computer-generated cosmos”—given it much more deserved space than the artist’s work received at the Venice Biennale this year, where it was tucked away in a corner.
“Topics such as our lives, desires, and the limitations and functions of our bodies are relevant to every living person. This allows me to go beyond the limits of my identity to think freely on a higher level, in a larger universe. Any human being can understand my works,” the artist told Artnet News.
—Vivienne Chow
Rudolf Levy: “Work in Exile”Palazzo Pitti, FlorenceJanuary 24—April 30, 2023
Rudolf F. Levy, Fiamma (Flame) (1942). Courtesy Uffizi Galleries.
I came across the tragic story of Rudolf Levy when I visited a paradigm-shifting exhibition that explored the history of Documenta (the world-famous German exhibition). Part of that show focused on the German-Jewish painter, who died in Auschwitz; this exhibition revealed that before Levy was deported from Florence, where he had been in exile, he would likely have come into contact with Documenta co-founder Werner Haftmann, who was a Nazi and temporarily stationed there. Levy, like many Jewish artists who were murdered in the Holocaust, were later pushed out of postwar German history by people like Haftmann, who did not want to draw more attention to Germany’s war crimes, especially if they were also complicit in them. Levy was excluded from the first Documenta, though he had been on preliminary lists.
It is especially poignant that the Uffizi’s Palazzo Pitti is not far from where Levy spent his last months. The institution will present the first monographic exhibition dedicated to the artist; it will also include Flame, an acquisition the museum made in January, which was created while he lived in hiding in Florence in 1942.
—Kate Brown

Mohammed Sami: “The Point 0”Camden Art Center, LondonJanuary 27–  May 28, 2023
Mohammed Sami, The Praying Room (2021). Courtesy the artist and Camden Art Center.
I discovered Sami’s work when it was included in 2021 in the Hayward Gallery’s excellent survey of painting today, “Mixing It Up,” and it stood out among 31 of today’s painting stars. The Iraqi-born artist is now getting his first institutional solo in the U.K., which will showcase his unsettling large-scale paintings that draw from his own memories living under Saddam Hussein’s regime in Baghdad and subsequent refugee experience in Sweden. The troubling works, devoid of people, present eerie and uncanny visions of neglected interiors, overwhelming cityscapes, and everyday objects whose heft lies in what isn’t rather than what is depicted.
—Naomi Rea

“Klimt. Inspired by Van Gogh, Rodin, Matisse…”Belvedere, ViennaFebruary 3—May 29, 2023
Gustav Klimt, Johanna Staude (1917/1918). Photo: Johannes Stoll. Courtesy Belvedere, Wien.
In 2015, the Belvedere in Vienna and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam embarked on a collaborative journey with an aim to find out which works might have influenced the Viennese modern artist Gustav Klimt, in order to trace exactly how modern art arrived in Vienna at the turn of the century. From major exhibitions to smaller private collections, researchers have been digging deep into history and references to retrace the footsteps of Klimt. This 2023 exhibition should be a fascinating result of this joint research project; it is set to include about 90 paintings, drawings, and sculptures from Klimt alongside works by artists such as Monet, Rodin, van Gogh, and Matisse, who all inspired him. The exhibition marks the 300th anniversary of the Belvedere.
—V.C.

Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-70Whitechapel Gallery, LondonFebruary 9–May 7, 2023
Elaine de Kooning, The Bull (1959). Photo courtesy The Levett Collection © EdeK Trust.
Even as artists like Joan Mitchell, Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler and Elaine de Kooning have become major household names, the idea of an “action” painter making bold gestures on canvas still carries frustratingly white, male connotations. This major survey of 150 works by 80 artists will not only place under-recognized women at the center of the Abstract Expressionist movement, but it is set to push far beyond the confines of the New York scene, to bring to light the practices of women working globally, including Wook-kyung Choi in South Korea, Mozambican-born Italian artist Bertina Lopes, Ukrainian-born American painter Janet Sobel, Argentinian artist Marta Minujín, and Iranian painter Behjat Sadr. The exhibition’s scope proves that, from the 1940s onwards, radical notions of free expression and materiality inspired artists worldwide.
—Jo Lawson-Tancred

The Morgan Stanley Exhibition: Peter DoigThe Courtauld Gallery, LondonFebruary 10—May 29
Peter Doig, 2022. Courtesy The Courtauld. Photo: Fergus Carmichael.
This major exhibition, set to feature a range of new and recent works by the acclaimed painter Peter Doig, is the Courtauld’s first solo show of a contemporary artist since the London institution reopened in November 2021 following a major refurbishment. But it also marks a new chapter of the 1959-born artist’s creative journey: artworks on show will include paintings and works on paper that Doig created since he moved back from his longtime home of Trinidad to London in 2021. The exhibition will also highlight the artist’s work as a draughtsman and printmaker by showcasing a series of new drawings and prints.
—V.C.
VermeerRijksmuseum, AmsterdamFebruary 10—June 4
Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring (1664–67), Mauritshuis, The Hague, bequest of Arnoldus Andries des Tombe, The Hague.
Arguably one of the most exciting exhibitions in 2023 for not just art lovers but also the general public, this rare exhibition has been billed as the largest showcase of Johannes Vermeer. It is set to bring together at least 28 iconic paintings by the Dutch master from all over the world under one roof; Girl Interrupted at Her Music, Officer and Laughing Girl, and Mistress and Maid are on loan from the Frick Collection, New York, will be shown for the first time together outside of New York in a century. They join The Girl with a Pearl Earring, on loan from Mauritshuis, The Hague, and four masterpieces from the collection of Rijksmuseum. Fingers crossed that climate activists can leave such important cultural treasure alone.
—V.C.
Alice Neel: Hot Off The GriddleBarbican, LondonFebruary 16—May 21, 2023
Alice Neel, Phillip Bonosky (1948). Photo by Ben Davis.
One of the greats of American art is getting due recognition across the pond with her largest U.K. exhibition yet. Though both Alice Neel’s expressionistic figurative style and her interest in too often overlooked subjects – including activists, queer performers and pregnant women – may be fashionable today, when Neel was working in New York during the early to mid 20th century her practice was easily overshadowed by prevailing interests in modernist movements. Her dignified portrayals of people she encountered in everyday life offer a unique record of people that were otherwise pushed to the fringes of mainstream society and history. Neel’s life in Greenwich Village and later Spanish Harlem, as well as her staunchly communist politics, are also brought to life through letters and photographs. 
–J.L.
Martin Wong: “Malicious Mischief”KW Institute for Contemporary Art, BerlinFebruary 25—May 14, 2023
Martin Wong, Tell My Troubles to the Eight Ball (Eureka), (1978–81). Courtesy of the Martin Wong Foundation and P.P.O.W, New York © Martin Wong Foundation
The brilliance of the work of American-Chinese artist Martin Wong, who died in 1999, is hard to overstate—and he is, not unlike Michel Majerus, deeply beloved by many artists I know. Yet it seems that art history is still beginning to come to know the vast breadth of Wong’s relevance and his densely packed paintings, which plot queerness, marginal communities, and social realities against landscapes of gentrification.
That Wong is under-discovered is especially true in Europe, where the artist is only now getting a comprehensive, touring retrospective. “Malicious Mischief” spans his beginnings in late 1960s California, his most famous period of painting (and living in) New York in 1980s, and culminates with his last works made before his death from an AIDS. It will head to the Camden Arts Center (July 7—September 17, 2023) and then to the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, (November 2023—February 2024).
—K.B.

General IdeaThe Stedelijk, AmsterdamMarch–July, 2023
Installation view, “General Idea,” June 3 to November 20, 2022, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. © General Idea. Photo: NGC.
I’ve always been a fan of gallows humor. The surprisingly tight gap between levity and hopelessness can be an effective space in which to broach difficult subjects, and to express unwieldy emotions. So, following its opening at the National Gallery of Canada, I’m excited that this retrospective of General Idea is coming to Europe.
The Stedelijk will lend its spotlight to the collective, made up of Canadian artists Felix Partz, Jorge Xontal, and AA Bronson, who were active under the moniker between 1969 and 1994. The exhibition is the most comprehensive retrospective on the trio to date, and charts the group’s witty and eccentric output through more than 200 works. From major installations such as the 1987 AIDS sculpture, which riffs on Robert Indiana’s “LOVE” motif—both Xontal and Partz contracted HIV in the 1980s—to archival materials, publications, painting, and sculpture, the exhibition showcases the group’s playful commentary and critique on mass media, consumer culture, social inequality, queerness, and the art economy, tracing its impact on both their own moment and milieu.
—N.R.

‘Reaching for the Stars. From Maurizio Cattelan to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’Palazzo Strozzi, FlorenceMarch 4–June 18, 2023
Lynette Yiadom-Boayke, Switcher (2013). Photo courtesy of Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection.
Since opening her non-profit foundation in 1995 in the northern Italian city of Turin, the mega-collector Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo has overseen and continued to grow one of the country’s most prestigious public collections, expanding to Madrid in 2017. Now, the historic Palazzo Strozzi in Florence will be the stage for a selection of highlights from her collection—a first show of its kind. It will include some of the biggest names in contemporary art, including Maurizio Cattelan—the boundary-pushing artist known internationally for Comedian, a banana taped to a wall at 2019’s Art Basel Miami Beach, South African artist William Kentridge, and painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, as well as major YBA art stars like Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas.
—J.L

Souls Grown Deep like the Rivers: Black Artists from the American SouthRoyal Academy of Arts, LondonMarch 17–June 18, 2023
Ralph Griffin, Eagle (1988). Souls Grown Deep Foundation, Atlanta. © ARS, NY and DACS, London 2022. Photo by Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studio.
Taking its name from a Langston Hughes poem, this show tells the stories of Black artists working in the American South, including names that have received major acclaim in recent years like Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, Nellie Mae Rowe, and Purvis Young. Many of these artists were self-taught, and their experimental practices frequently combined craft traditions, passed down through generations, with found materials to address pressing subjects, such as the relentless persecution and systemic racism faced by Black communities in the South. Interwoven with these are works that record the joys and hardships of everyday life. The show has been organized by the Atlanta-based Souls Grown Deep Foundation, which promotes Black artists from the South and seeks to support their local communities. 
—J.L.
Michel Majerus: “Sinnmachine”Mudam Luxembourg, LuxembourgMarch 31—October 1, 2023
Michel Majerus, ca. 2001. © Edith Majerus, 2022. Courtesy of the Michel Majerus Estate and Neugerriemschneider, Berlin.
Last year was, officially, the year of Michel Majerus. It marked the 20th anniversary of the artist’s untimely death with shows all over Germany and at the ICA Miami, timed to Art Basel Miami Beach. Interest in the artist, whose estate and archive has been carefully preserved since his death, is booming. Despite the flurry of shows, one essential exhibition is still to come, at at the MUDAM in Luxembourg, which is Majerus’s home country. “Sinnmachine,” which means sense machine in German, will feature early paintings by Majerus and rarely seen archival material, including notebooks, his collection of books and magazines, and recorded VHS tapes—the aim is to build a full picture of how Majerus viewed (and sensed) the world around him.
—K.B.

ICÔNESPinault Collection, Punta della Dogana, VeniceApril 2—November 26, 2023
Maurizio Cattelan, La Nona Ora (1999). Pinault Collection. Installation view: “Maurizio Cattelan,” Palazzo Reale, Sala delle Cariatidi, 24 September – 24 October 2010, Milan, Italy. Photo by Zeno Zotti.
Look, it’s always fun to see what’s in a billionaire’s private collection. This exhibition of works from François Pinault’s treasure trove will explore the theme of “icons,” both in the sense of the word’s Greek etymology, which defines an icon as an “image” or “likeness” and a term to designate religious paintings. Works by artists from Maurizio Cattelan to Arthur Jafa and Agnes Martin will be on view in the thematically grouped exhibition, which aims to consider both the fragility and the power of these kinds of images. The Venetian setting is apt for iconoclasm, and I’ll call that as good an excuse as any to make a trip to La Serenissima.
—N.R.

Sarah BernhardtPetit Palais, ParisApril 14–August 27, 2023
Georges Clairin, Portrait de Sarah Bernhardt (1876). Photo courtesy of Petit Palais.
One of the original celebrities whose talent, glamor and intrigue inspired a cult following and enthralled an entire generation, Sarah Bernhardt was a symbol of her era in Paris. A new show celebrates the centenary of her death, bringing together almost 400 items that retell her exciting life story, both as a stage persona – through costumes, posters and paintings – and as a woman at the center of a wide network of prominent artists and intellectuals – through photographs, personal belongings and even her own artworks. Among the highlights is a resplendent portrait of the actress aged 32 by her friend Georges Clairin. 
—J.L.

Liverpool Biennial, uMoya: “The Sacred Return of Lost Things”Various locations, LiverpoolJune 10–September 17, 2023
Nicholas Galanin, Never Forget (2021). Courtesy the artist. Photo by Lance Gerber.
The 12th edition of the Liverpool Biennial, which has been named after an isiZulu-language word meaning spirit, breath, air, climate and wind, will be centered around ancestral and Indigenous forms of knowledge, wisdom and healing. Curated by Khanyisile Mbongwa, more than 30 artists and collectives, from Brook Andrew (who directed the 2020 Sydney Biennial) to Julien Creuzet (who will represent France in the 2024 Venice Biennale) will respond to the theme.
—N.R.
Yayoi Kusama: You, Me and the BalloonsFactory International, ManchesterJune 29—August 28, 2023
Yayoi Kusama and Dots Obsession, (1996-2011). Installation view at The Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Victoria Miro and David Zwirner.
“You, Me and the Balloons,” the first major immersive exhibition dedicated to the celebrated Japanese artist’s inflatable works, will be a major curtain raiser for Factory International, the highly anticipated new cultural landmark to open in Manchester in the U.K. in June.
Spanning 143,698 square feet, the new space, designed by the award-winning architecture firm OMA, is the largest publicly funded national cultural project to open in the U.K. since the Tate Modern in 2000. The new Kusama show is set to feature works more than 33 feet tall that trace the artist’s practice in inflatable art —this promises to be a major attraction for art lovers and general public alike.
—V.C.

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Get ready for Rammellzee!
Jeffrey Deitch met the late graffiti and street art star way back in 1980, but only picked up his estate last year. “Gothic Futurism” marks the first spectacular outing for his works at Deitch’s L.A. gallery, and it’s worth the look.
In recent years, Rammellzee’s cachet has only been growing. A collaborator (and sometimes critic) of Jean-Michel Basquiat, his work featured in L.A. MOCA’s ultra-popular, landmark “Art in the Streets” show—as well as in the rehang of the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection a few years ago.
A highlight of the show are the full-body collage suits that embodied “Garbage Gods,” the alter egos the artist adopted. As the great Greg Tate wrote, “he viewed subway art and hiphop as a total movement representing a multidisciplinary and racialized and working-class military campaign against capitalism, Western Civ 101, and white supremacy”—and “continued the war of hiphop generated symbol versus Western language symbol though performance in his technologically enhanced battle suits.”
See photos from “Gothic Futurism” below.
Installation view, “Rammellzee: Gothic Futurism” at Jeffrey Deitch. Photo: Joshua White.
Installation view, “Rammellzee: Gothic Futurism” at Jeffrey Deitch. Photo: Joshua White.
Installation view, “Rammellzee: Gothic Futurism” at Jeffrey Deitch. Photo: Joshua White.
Installation view, “Rammellzee: Gothic Futurism” at Jeffrey Deitch. Photo: Joshua White.
Installation view, “Rammellzee: Gothic Futurism” at Jeffrey Deitch. Photo: Joshua White.
Installation view, “Rammellzee: Gothic Futurism” at Jeffrey Deitch. Photo: Joshua White.
Installation view, “Rammellzee: Gothic Futurism” at Jeffrey Deitch. Photo: Joshua White.
“Rammellzee: Gothic Futurism” is on view at Jeffrey Deitch, 925 N. Orange Drive, Los Angeles, through January 14, 2023.
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On December 15, as I rushed to find a seat at the Cochin Club for William Kentridge’s lecture-performance Ursonate—part of the programming for the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB)—a visitor from Goa called it the “non-biennale biennale.” Ironically, Ursonate, based on a 1932 Dadaist sound poem by Kurt Schwitters that uses nonsensical vocabulary, was precisely about this breakdown of meaning. At some point, Kentridge invited Indian musicians to join him—Naisha Nazar on vocals, Ashwin R on Chenda drum and Mani KJ on harmonium—but his emphatic gibberish drowned them out.
In a similar vein, at the biennale’s main venue, Aspinwall House, the hammering and installing of works was at times indistinguishable from the percussive rhythms of Asim Waqif’s new commission, Improvise, a massive resonant bamboo sculpture installed outside that visitors could play with sticks
The curator of KMB’s fifth edition, “In Our Veins Flow Ink and Fire,” is Singapore-based artist Shubigi Rao. In the only public art talk she gave in the lead-up to the opening now scheduled for December 23, Rao explained that song was a thread running through the biennale. “Here, song could be lament or joy. It could be humorous, snarky, or silly. As artists we are taught to take ourselves seriously and valorize our ideas. Here there’s anger, humor, embarrassment, cringe and it’s ok to have that messiness.”
That messiness was unintentionally linked to the biennale’s postponement, announced just the night before it was originally due to open, on December 12. The spaces in Aspinwall especially felt under construction, with cables clustered away from puddles, uninstalled monitors and a small village of workers holding down the fort. 
At the biennale’s main venue, Aspinwall House, Asim Waqif’s new commission, Improvise, is a massive, resonant, bamboo sculpture, that visitors can play with sticks.
Amid the ruckus, I was drawn to the sparseness of Algerian artist Massinissa Selmani’s delicate, pastel-colored drawings and videos of miniature beings and floating architectures. All trees are potential enemies (2022) evokes states of suspension, repetition and hopelessness, like his animated bird on a Sisyphean quest to fly through a birdhouse while attached to a fence. 
Yet there was a certain sense of utopia as well. “When Rao invited me, it was a relief,” Selmani said. “We are often put into a box as Africans, but I’m influenced by Belgian Surrealists and my work doesn’t really speak of colonization. I like to think of minimal gestures situated between comedy and tragedy.” 
An uncanny parallel to this feeling could be found in the biennale. For those of us who traveled to see the exhibition, on a press tour sponsored by BMW, a supporter from the first edition, our disappointment was met with a seemingly lighthearted approach on the ground. Artists simply got on with things, surrounded by a rallying local community. 
Being from a country where people had to take matters into their own hands if they wanted basic resources, like running water or 24-hour electricity, I’m familiar with this attitude. Yet unlike in Lebanon, the issues at the biennale are less about a failed state and more about institutional hierarchies and procedures. 
The Communist government of Kerala, which has been an unwavering supporter of the artist-initiated biennale—established as a foundation by Kerala-born, Mumbai-based artists Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu in 2011—currently provides the largest amount given to any cultural project in India, and almost a third of the biennale’s total budget—around $845,000 out of $2.7 million. But of this, only around $360,000 has actually been received in what an institutional director termed a “promise-to-pay” method.
“It’s all just come to a head,” said Varun Gupta, director of the Chennai Photo Biennale, which has a space in KMB as part of the new Invitations programmes. “I arrived in September, and they were shooting a local-language movie for a famous actor [at Aspinwall]. When they finally got access to the venue, it was only a month ahead of launch day and they had 21 tonnes of debris to remove because of the film set that had to be torn down,” he said, adding that heavy rainfall in Kerala due to Cyclone Mandous (which hit nearby Tamil Nadu), only added to the infrastructure problems, including collapsing roofs at some heritage venues. “The rain was the straw that broke the camel’s back.” 
An image from the installation Out of Breath at the Chennai Photo Biennale.
Further complicating the situation was the ongoing friction between property giant DLF and the local government over the government’s acquisition of Aspinwall, resulting in DLF locking up the venue and barring entry for 10 days through December 1. KMB eventually had to agree to pay rent on the space because negotiations between the co-owners had reached a stalemate. “We were stuck in between and kept thinking we would get it today or tomorrow,” Krishnamachari said. 
Other logistical hurdles include the need to secure bank guarantees in order to ship and release artworks from customs, which now have to be made by nationalized banks instead of private ones, adding weeks to the process, and shipment costs that have increased post-pandemic. On top of that, there are longstanding systemic issues at KMB, including Komu’s resignation due to allegations of sexual harassment in 2018, accusations of unpaid labour, and a remote style of management. 
“A lot of these pressures existed before but [the biennale organizers] have managed by sheer tenacity to get it just over the line or just under the line,” said gallerist Amrita Jhaveri, who has been brought on as a new trustee of the foundation. “But they cannot do it every time—people run out of energy and goodwill. At some point, something’s going to give. I think this has to be a moment of reckoning, where something new will emerge.”
“Doing public art in India is very challenging, it’s hands-on,” Jhaveri added. “It’s very precarious, because the biennale is dependent on a temporary venue. Also, it’s one thing to have an international curator, and another for the team not to be on the ground all the time, which you need to run an event of this scale.”
The sequence of events signal a volatile relationship that exists between artists and art institutions. More accountability and transparency are necessary, perhaps especially so in places where there is less cultural infrastructure and stable sources of funding. In KMB’s case, there was emergency fundraising and a major failure in communication. While there is a certain laissez-faire or guerrilla style of operation that can be seen as endemic to the region, it doesn’t have to be that way.
“There is a rot in the art world,” Rao told me. “The work goes up because of volunteers and labor that is invisible.”
Palani Kumar documented the unsafe conditions and deaths of sanitation workers in Tamil Nadu, in a comment on caste and government-enforced labor.
The most extreme example of this was found in Gupta’s space, where Palani Kumar documented the unsafe conditions and deaths of sanitation workers in Tamil Nadu, in a comment on caste and government-enforced labor. “In these spaces, we can show challenging work that no one else will show,” Gupta said. “And the government is erudite enough not to interfere.” Gupta added: “I love that KMB has tried to bring the Global South together in this edition, which they haven’t done in the past, by sending invitations to other institutions.” 
Nearby, the Kiran Museum of Art was invited to host the exhibition “Tangled Hierarchy 2,” organized by the artist Jitish Kallat, curator of KMB in 2014. The thoughtful show stems from a meeting between Mahatma Gandhi and Lord Mountbatten in 1947, before the controversial Partition of the subcontinent. Because he had taken a vow of silence, Gandhi communicated with Mountbatten by writing on the back of a series of envelopes. Alongside the show is Kallat’s installation, Covering Letter, which features the words Gandhi wrote to Hitler before World War II, dissolving in a waterfall of smoke.
At Pepper House, Pakistani artist Seher Shah’s work felt like a very different comment on estrangement and the unseen. Simply wrought compositions, Notes from a City Unknown (2021) were odes to Delhi, with each screenprint combining abstract architectural forms with text. In City of Forgotten Languages, she writes about a solitary bird forgetting its own song, and needing “a memory to remember how to sing.” Back at Aspinwall, the late Madiha Aijaz’s vivid photographs documenting language, devotion and intimacy in Karachi, could be gleaned beneath polythene sheets. 
Seher Shah, Notes from a City Unknown (close up), Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2022, Pepper House. Photo: Randhir Singh.
“When I curated this biennale, I looked at artists that people might think of as raw, with an unfiltered approach to specific problems in regions that are nevertheless universally understood,” Rao said during her talk.
KMB feels like a political necessity in a country with a Hindu majority rule and an antagonistic relationship to the arts. 
I left Kochi a bit disheartened that I didn’t see the biennale in its entirety, although it’s not every day that collateral events take precedence. One example was the excellent work at the Student Biennale curated by seven artists, which has been running in parallel to KMB for several years and really gives visitors a sense of the concerns of the artists working in the country, from the agrarian revolts to the Dalit community, the lowest stratum of the traditional caste system. Being with without, curated by Suvani Suri at the Students Biennale, was especially memorable and relevant, looking at states of negation and new ways of listening. 
If there’s anything that this edition of the biennale has revealed, it’s that artists don’t function autonomously and there’s an unspoken precarity that exists between ambitious art projects and the organizational structures around them.

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