Dear friends and supporters, 

On May 8, Jitish Kallat, the President of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, engaged in a conversation with Kader Attia, the curator of the Biennale's Seventh edition. Watch the session here, or read the lightly edited transcript below:

Jitish: Kader is known to everyone here. Could you take us into your life — your childhood and your early days— and give us a glimpse into how you came into art, so we can get to know you better?

Kader: First of all, I want to thank both the audience here with us today and those joining us simultaneously from Kochi. I feel truly honoured by this invitation to curate the KMB.

I often say that every artist is a library. We could say the same about all human beings. There are two significant things in my story. One is that, when I was very young, I used to walk to a marketplace in the suburbs of Paris. There is no better training of the gaze than walking as a boy in a market, because you see the whole world in front of you. Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus, people of every colour, just like in Pickpocket, the famous film by Robert Bresson. I was trained to observe, and I am still immersed in it.

The second thing is that I used to work right in front of the Elsa Triolet library. During my breaks, I would quietly sneak inside. One day, I came across a book about Michelangelo. I don’t know why, but I opened it.

Jitish: And we have you here! Michelangelo's book produces a tunnel to Kochi.

Kader: It was a drawing book, featuring studies of hands and so on. But somehow, there was a correlation between his focus, his genius, and all the questions that were growing in my mind as I looked at the people around me—so many different fabrics, colours, cultures, smells, spices…

As I say to academics, I didn’t need to go to university to study ethnology. I only had to walk downstairs from my apartment building where I grew up. From the markings on the floor, from what I would see in front of each door— mezuzahs in Jewish homes, and other signs at other doorways — I grew up learning ethnology simply by living it. Even though "ethnology" is not a word I particularly relate to, the idea that we are all different yet fundamentally the same resonated very deeply with me when I arrived in Kochi for the first time. Then, more subtly, when you begin to observe the crowds on the streets of Kochi, you start to see in their faces the traces of many histories — layers that have accreted over time. It is something quite particular to Kochi-Muziris, and to Kerala more broadly, I would say.

Jitish: Your work is, of course, very visible internationally, and it’s wonderful to have your piece here now, which is fantastic. You also had work in Kochi before, so audiences here have already had two opportunities to see it. Now you return with a kind of curatorial possibility. Of course, your proposal had many seeds and a lot of interesting ideas, which I'm sure you would like to develop and share in time. But I wanted to ask you about your initial thoughts. You’ve already spoken a little about your experience of the streets of Kochi, but I’m curious about your very first impressions, going back to our first conversation before you wrote the proposal. I think everyone would love to know what transpired.

Kader: One of the works I showed in Kochi is on a strange phenomenon in surgery known as the "Phantom Limb." It describes an experience where, after losing a part of your body in an accident, the missing part is still felt, as if it is still calling out to you. Professor Anne-Aurore Sankalé from Senegal is probably one of the first surgeons to work on this.

Jitish: Also, V. S. Ramachandran, with the mirror box.

Kader: Yes, Ramachandran has also been extremely important for me in this research. When I asked, "How do you really explain this?" Anne-Aurore said, “I don’t know. When I amputate the leg of a patient, and then six months later he comes back with his family, he tells me, ‘I have pain in my toe.’” In Senegal, there has been a lot of discussion around this. Professor Spanias from Northwestern University used to say, "No one really knows. But what I can tell you is that, at the level where the nerve is cut, the nerves continue to grow, and they end up tangled together like chewing gum. That is why, when the brain sends information, they become confused.” But what I found extraordinary in Ramachandran’s work is this almost poetical mirroring of the missing limb with another part of the body.

And I think what fascinates me, and what I also tried to do here in Venice in this installation, is to build a conversation on the poetical approach to mental health, surgery, and spirituality… That is probably the relationship I had with Kochi, too, because I don’t read history merely politically. I read it through its unpredictable agency, which opens a space for dreaming, for poetry, and for uncertainty. And art is about that. It is a space for that.

Jitish: One aspect of your practice that really fascinates me is your commitment to pedagogy and discourse—La Colonie, for example, and your current professorship. As you know, we have the Students’ Biennale and ABC (Art By Children), two segments which were conceived by the founding team of the Biennale, which have grown into very interesting parallel projects where young minds produce work alongside the main exhibition.

Kader: We all know that what is causing the world to go wrong is ignorance. Taking care of the pedagogical aspect of what we call in philosophy individuation—how we remain individuals, not just as names, verbs, or beings in movement, but as a collective individual, like what we are doing here, by exchanging bits and traces, is extremely important. Otherwise, you end up with an exhibition that is a representation of life, but not a mirror of life, and not life itself. For me, it is crucial to create spaces where certainties can be challenged, including political discourse at large.

When I discovered the Students’ Biennale at the Kochi Biennale, I was really, really interested. I have been a professor at HFBK in Hamburg for three years now. It is an amazing school, with many wonderful artists and colleagues teaching there. Every year, we have the annual Ausstellung (the annual exhibition), which functions almost like a Biennale. I am always encouraging my students to take it seriously because it is an exercise in what awaits them outside. I think the Students’ Biennale is a very beautiful example of the first collective individuation that a work of art and a young artist need.

The pedagogical aspect of our work is something I consider crucial, not only because of the times we are living in, but also because art cannot be amateurish. It has to function; it has to engage with the world. You have to step into art progressively, whether as an artist or even as a curator. You have to grow into it through this field, this regime of the gaze and interpretation that the audience actually rules over your work.

Jitish: Well, that is beautifully said, because in India, opportunities are often few and far between, especially once you leave the major cities. The moment you enter tier-two and tier-three cities, the distances become greater and greater. I think that, as a Biennale, Kochi now holds this incredible potential to truly shorten that gap. Also, as you just said, the act of making finds its meaning in its intersection with the 'other', right? Some of these students don't have the opportunity to meet others because they are in such insulated situations. I think that's another huge potential that already exists and has been tapped in previous editions.

Moving forward, that is something to be very attentive to. I look forward to everything that we are going to do together.

[End of transcript]

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