What does the Chennai Photo Biennale have in store?

Built in 1873, the Senate House in Chennai is a celebrated masterpiece of Indo-Saracenic architecture – the style that evolved as a mish-mash of British and a confluence of several Indian styles. And yet, for more than a decade now, the magnificent building lay unused and neglected. Until about a fortnight ago when the doors of the grand old building were thrown open as the principal venue of the ongoing second edition of the Chennai Photo Biennale and the site of a multi-artist exhibition called Labyrinths being held inside its newly-renovated corridors and high-ceilinged rooms.

Among them, is a large photographic installation by the Delhi-based Atul Bhalla, whose artistic preoccupation is with the environment, especially water – images that depict the sea, waves, shore, boats, etc. Shot by him in and near Chennai. These have been printed on vinyl-like material that hangs from ropes from the richly-decorated ceiling – being a heritage building the organisers could not hammer nails of drill holes.

In the other rooms, CAMP from Mumbai displays their reworking of the photo archive of The Hindu newspaper, one that’s as much a Chennai institution as the Senate House venue – all blow-up images, cut up and set in novel ways.

Then there’s Sheba Chachi and Sonia Jabbar’s installation of a room full of brick pedestals on which are placed book stands with photographs of Kashmiri women and their recorded testimonies of living through war – a work of special resonance in these times. As is young Chennai-based Arun Vijai Mathavan’s grim photo documentary of ‘sanitary workers’ who cut up the dead in mortuaries, displayed alongside some of the old, rusted instruments they use.

The aesthetic of these contemporary works – edgy, dark, abstract – is quite a contrast to the baroque decorations of the high windows with stained glass panes, the embellished ceilings, and the earthy walls of the grand old building. But it’s the juxtaposition that does not jar, but acts as a counterpoint – the bareness of the modern making the old stand out in relief.

Indeed, the Senate Hall is not the only old building/institution that the organisers of the biennale have attempted to rejuvenate for the four-week event. There’s also the Government College of Fine Arts, founded in 1850 and one of the oldest art schools in the country; the Madras Literary Society, founded even earlier in 1812; an Egmore Museum, founded in 1851, and the second oldest museum in the country, which has a few photo-based works by the artist Manjunath Kamath displayed outside. As Shuchi Kapoor, founding member of the biennale says, “The idea was to take art out of the white cube and convert public spaces into unexpected galleries.”

The event has over 50 participating artists from over 13 countries, and also includes a series of artist talks, workshops, film screenings, residencies and a two-day, high-profile international conference on photography.

The biennale celebrates Chennai city’s old and new spirit with its on-site exhibitions at a few MRTS (Mass-Rapid Transport System) stations. At the Thiruvanmiyur station, for instance, students of NIFT Chennai have put up fashion shot like larger-than-life blow-ups – including one along the stairs. These are ordinary men and women off the street dressed in clothes expressive of themselves – an old woman in a sari, a man in a casual check shirt, and so on. Fashion like beauty, the images seem to signal, lies in the eyes of the beholder.