All eyes on Sudarshan Shetty

I’m also curious what Sudershan Shetty will bring to the biennale,” chuckles Shetty at Maker Maxity at Mumbai’s Bandra-Kurla Complex, where he unveiled two handcrafted structures and an accompanying video installation titled A Song A Story last week, to become the first Indian artist for the Rolls-Royce Art Programme. The venue also holds his 2012 Flying Bus installation of a BEST bus with gigantic, glittery wings.

Shetty, who creates larger-than-life sculptures and multimedia works, brings alive on film a popular folktale from Karnataka about fidelity between a husband and wife. The story is retold three times – a song that escapes from the wife’s body when she’s asleep, plus visual narration that unfolds on two screens from two camera angles. It takes a while to understand the jump from one person, from one frame. Such multiple views beneath a seemingly simple narrative is what the artist has always brought out in his practice, and now hopes to bring out as the curator of Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2016. 

The title, forming in the pupil of an eye, Shetty says, is from the Rig Vedic thought that when a sage opens his eyes to the world, he assimilates all the multiplicities of the world with just one look. The eye is the only part of the body that reflects back to the world what it takes in. “There is something essential to the way we look at the world. My effort here is to bring in that multiciplity so it is inclusive within the same space of experience – the biennale.”

He also views the biennale as an allegory for India’s seven rivers. Just as they spill and change course, some artworks will be a work-in-progress even after the biennale.

Shetty’s advice to himself is go beyond the learnings of his own practice. “This is an opportunity to get into artists’ spaces, especially those in the traditional arts who wonder what it means to co-exist with the contemporary arts. I had to diverge from my own practice to bring in such voices that are outside the expectation of a biennale into the biennale.”

Shetty is excited about all 96 artists. There’s poet Raúl Zurita from Chile, whose poems will metamorphose into installations; theatre-person and filmmaker Anamika Haksar’s written a ‘theatre’ poem; artist, composer and performer Hanna Tuulikki from Scotland, who infuses Scottish folklore in her work, is working with Kochi artists to amalgamate both cultures; artist Erik Van Lieshout from Rotterdam is to remake his favourite film with the locals. “We’ll also present (choreographer) Chandralekha’s unfinished dance performance that she was working on before she died.”

Shetty – an artist in the first edition, a spectator in the second, and curator in the third – says every phase of the biennale offers something new. The inaugural week might overwhelm, Shetty warns, for its choc-a-bloc schedule and scores of artists, curators, museums, gallerists and connoisseurs from the world over descending upon Fort Kochi. “You won’t be able to catch every event everyday. Even performances might change the third or fourth time.” Things quieten mid-biennale. “Here’s when villagers come in busloads and engage with every artwork for hours.” The first and last week will see many music performances.

Shetty feels public art in India has scope to thrive but requires more initiative, patronage, public’s support and a cure for vandalism. “We need to take responsibility that there are people who feel the need to vandalise.”