All roads lead to Aspinwall House

All roads led to Aspinwall House, Fort Kochi, on Friday (December 12) as the Kochi-Muziris Biennale flag was officially hoisted.

Standing amid a small crowd that had gathered to watch, curator Nikhil Chopra thanked the team that worked relentlessly behind the scenes and urged the public to experience the works on display.

“All the information is there on the walls. Please read it carefully,” he said. “Read all the signs, all the symbols, all the connections, all the dialogues that are happening between the images, films, objects… things that may not even look like art to you, but they still are,” he added.

Visitors wove their way through the galleries, clicking pictures, viewing the works keenly, and ruminating over some they found particularly curious. The crowd was a mix of tourists, art students, volunteers, and people from in and around the biennale site, who had witnessed the work that had been going on for months.

Aspinwall House holds some of the important exhibits and installations including that of the Panjeri Artists’ Union (a community of 14 practitioners working across visual art, design, literature, film, photography, and music), which presents a bouquet of artistic experiences that reflect political resistance.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and former Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu N. Ram at the inauguration of the sixth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale at Parade Ground in Fort Kochi on Friday (December 12, 2025).
| Photo Credit:
THULASI KAKKAT

Artist Dhiraj Rabha’s installations and photographs dwell on insurgency in Assam, while Syndey-based Kirtika Kain’s printmaking experiments take one through complex questions on Dalit history and memory. R.B. Shajith’s expansive realistic canvas, which covers an entire wall, reflects the Malabar region’s rural landscape.

Mr. Chopra encouraged viewers to start with newer spaces, such as the SMS Art Gallery, which usually functioned as a wedding hall, and work their way back to Aspinwall House, in order to get a complete sense of the space and the events.

The spaces for the main exhibits and the collaterals lend to the impact of the artworks, their chequered histories offering much for the viewer to ruminate upon.

The festooned streets, the mural-covered walls, and food joints packed to capacity… all indicated that the biennale had truly come to town.