Kochi-Muziris Biennale Foundation president Jitish Kallat announced in Venice that Algerian-French artist Kader Attia will curate the seventh edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB), which will begin in December 2027. Attia will be the first non-Indian curator of the KMB.
Speaking over livestream from the sidelines of the Venice Biennale, Kallat thanked the selection committee comprising Shilpa Gupta, Mariam Ram, Pooja Sood, Amrita Jhaveri and Tasneem Zakaria Mehta.
Accepting the appointment, Attia said: "Ever since I visited Kochi for the first time, I have dreamed of coming back and building connections between the many intertwined influences that are at the core of this culturally multi-layered city.”
Speaking in Kochi, KMB CEO Thomas Varghese said that Attia has been associated with the Biennale since the second edition in 2014, where he was a participating artist exhibiting at Aspinwall House. In the last edition, Attia delivered one of the lectures at the Vivian Sundaram Memorial Lecture Series, Varghese added.
The master of ceremonies in Venice said that the last edition, which ended on March 31, was the most attended, with seven lakh visitors visiting Biennale venues.
In a conversation with Kallat, Attia said that he grew up in a locality with multiple ethnicities, and drew parallels with Kochi’s layered histories and diverse population.
Kallat and Attia also spoke at length about Art By Children and the KMB’s Student Biennale initiative.
Welcoming Attia, Kallat said: "Kader Attia brings to the Biennale artistic depth, curatorial openness, and a strong pedagogic sensibility. The committee was drawn to the poetic range and generative potential of his proposal, and to the flexible curatorial framework it offered for bringing multiple artistic practices, histories, and publics into meaningful relation in Kochi."
