cats of kochi

Language

English is the only language this site is written in. More will appear in this list as they are finished, so there is nothing else to choose today.

cats of kochi

Language

Englishthe only one, so far

Art

Shows and installations that stay up for a while — not an evening, a season.

On view

2 you can still see

Finished

75 that have come down
A gallery wall hung with a large painting of a bedroom in hot pink, green and blue, with a dark red rug patterned with white deer spilling down the wall onto the floor in front of it.

A warm kind of panic

The rug extends a muted invitation, asking the body to settle within its folds. Monika traces the quiet turbulence of everyday life—frictions, doubts, and the comforting panic of solitude.

A painting on a black ground of a huge coiled turban in red, orange and gold, resting on a small woven rope cot.

The Power of the Peta / Honour

The Peta (turban) and Mancha (rope bed)—two objects that carry a farmer's life. When the turban is placed on the bed, it signifies rest, grueling work completed, earned repose.

A gallery hung with large charcoal drawings on cloth showing mill workers standing beside cotton-ginning machinery, with a handwritten panel of Hindi text at the lower left and a tall metal machine on the floor to the right.

Ginning Justice

Phule-Ambedkarite sculpture, Mumbai housing installations, Manchester cloth histories—three artists uncover Maharashtra's intertwined histories of labour, community, and resistance.

An installation in a bare room: charcoal mountains drawn across the walls, a floor blackened and strewn with burnt timber, stuffed white clouds hanging on strings, and a pale bundle laid on a low plinth.

Achidu

Pork fat melts, echoing jhum traditions. Fabric clouds release crystal bead rain—tears. Two Arunachal Pradesh artists explore how time erodes memory and meaning, how relief and pain blend.

Seven small clay pots of different seeds set in a row along a rough wooden shelf, with three bundles of dried seed heads hanging on the mud wall above.

Seeds of Continuity

Touch grains. Smell straw. Witness cooking. Six Odisha artists reconstruct rural hearths, asking: what seeds of culture do we carry forward? A living archive of food sovereignty and ecological wisdom.

A dark nest-like mass crusted with hundreds of small metallic insects, mounted on a pale wooden panel, with a few insects straying across the bare grain around it.

Army Of Ants

Dried leaves become cockroaches. Fish thorns transform into Venus flytraps. Sharan B works with overlooked materials to explore life, death, memory, and the beauty hidden in ordinary things.

A painting on a rough wooden board: four people in saris and garlands crowding together to look at a blue mobile phone held in one of their hands.

Jogammas

The Jogappas of Northwest Karnataka—a transgender community devoted to Renuka Yellama—come alive in Banashree Vagga's acrylic paintings celebrating their music, dance, and miracles.

A gallery wall covered by a huge charcoal drawing of collapsed houses and debris, with a painted canvas of a hillside settlement propped on a bamboo frame in front of it.

Jirania

A National Highway cuts through Tripura's agrarian landscape. Priti Das and Bipasha Debnath document the dust, demolition, and topsy-turvy lives of Jirania's residents caught in years of transformation.

Fish

A Kashmiri fish swims through myth and militarization. Salman Khursheed Lone's animation intertwines folklore, sacred ponds, concertina wires, and the endurance of living under occupation.

A standing figure built from lashed pieces of driftwood and scrap timber, placed against a cracked white wall beside a barred window.

Follow The Crowd

Driftwood and palm leaf figures at windows, facing the sea—Raj Mahanand explores how identity is never fixed, always shifting between crowds, expectations, and desires.

Between Despair and Renewal

Between despair and renewal: a charcoal self-portrait dissolving in loneliness, landscape paintings shifting toward light. Rakesh Y.M. holds both truths—isolation and resilience.

Hundreds of model ants swarming across a white wall in a dense ring, leaving a clear oval of bare wall at the centre.

Death Circle

Time leaves traces in subtle ways—aging, dissolving, eroding. Krishna Murthy P S works with seeds, spines, and soil to explore cycles of growth, dissolution, and return.

A small tent-shaped pavilion of white poles, its roof studded with bright wool pompoms, standing on a floor covered in a patchwork of shaggy tufted circles in every colour.

Queering Spaces/Queering Gazes

Play with the dolls. Move them around. Three Kerala artists transform intimate spaces into sites of queer inquiry—fabric tents of chosen family, playgrounds beyond the binary, and self as subject.

A vivid painting in hot pinks and greens: neon horses rear beside a row of naked figures, while a giant halved pomegranate is carried on a beam by small blue people.

Seeking Intimacy

Vivid palette, surreal dreamscapes, queer lovers in everyday moments—Shakibul Islam etches the portrait of the queer family into contemporary Indian life's visual language.

Three rough wooden shelves on a white wall, each lined with grey clay pots, jars, bowls and a grinding stone, all in the same dusty earth colour.

The house that remembers

Termite traces, sawdust figures, cow dung and plastic—four artists gather what is often discarded, assembling a slow archive of impermanence that refuses disappearance.

Printed pages and a plastic folder lying scattered on a wire mesh grille set into bare red earth, lit from one side.

The Mark of a Shift

Five artists from Santiniketan explore how 'shift' pushes all things into existence—the human desire to shape land, the resistance faced, and the traditions born of negotiation.

A line drawing of a woman with an upswept hairstyle, incised directly into a rough plastered wall.

In(visible)habiting

Through spectral architecture of transparent layers and shifting shadows, Honey Thomas makes visible the unseen nature of domestic life—the labour, presence, and time embedded in home.

நகவெட்டி nagavetti

Challenging medicalized notions of queer transitioning, anu's sound installation explores transwomanhood through self-made instruments, nail-cutting, and defretted guitars.

Eight dark curved metal sculptures, each like a section cut from a large drum, standing apart on a bare earth floor in a white room.

parai+ magal-eer [+leisure]

Five parai rhythms become architectural language. Preeti Paari's thesis creates a space for Paraiyar women where caste boundaries begin to soften.

Two large cut-out painted figures of women facing each other across a grey panel of pressed leaves and dried grass — one in a blue blouse and white headscarf, one in a red-patterned sari.

Staged Narratives

Two artists present distinct approaches to storytelling: Aswathy G S critiques domestic labour through terracotta, while Imran Ahamed paints dreamlike tableaux between memory and imagination.

A blistered flatbread with a figure painted across it — a person in a striped shawl and beaded collar, lying curled on the browned surface.

Tension of Belongings

Three artists from Andhra Pradesh explore what it means to belong—to pottery as inheritance, to the endangered Banjara community, to the farmer's cycle that carries dreams.

A framed black-and-white print, signed in pencil below the image, showing a dark hollow of collapsed beams and rubble with a shaft of light falling through.

The quiet beneath the rubble

Nights in a crumbling hostel, weak staircases, constant vigilance—Pratik Khurkutiya's sculptures and paintings trace how fear embeds itself in the body long after we've left dangerous spaces.

Two large irregular panels of thick ochre and gold textured material mounted on black gallery walls, meeting at a corner where a small video screen plays.

Known and Unknown

Soil becomes shared ground. Harshal Khatri's two-channel video installation with paintings explores the entanglement between visible and invisible forces of nature.

A painting of an eroded red earth bank falling away in ridges and gullies, with bare saplings and a line of green trees along the top.

Land Erosion / Memories of a Land

The red soil of Birbhum, Bankura, and Purulia tells a story of displacement. Tanmoy Dutta creates a charged memorial for the Santal Adivasi community denied agency over their native land.

A wall-mounted work shaped like a broken map: one half a model of red tiled rooftops, the other a dense pen drawing of tangled figures and machinery.

Earth's Last Stand / Restricted Terrain

The Musi River in Hyderabad, deteriorating under urbanization, becomes a dystopian focus for Dindi Praveen Sagar's paintings and sculptures interrogating capitalism and consumption.

A wall-sized diagram: small photographs pinned in curving lines between hand-drawn words including CONTROL, ARCHIVE, PRIVACY, SITE SPECIFIC and VULNERABILITY.

The Panopticon

Surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if discontinuous in action. Ten artists from across India transform Foucault's concept into an architecture of co-existence and shared vulnerability.

A large curved shelter built from dried mud and dung, standing on a concrete floor, with bundles of brightly coloured cloth pressed into its surface.

Dar – Dara – Dariya

The dari (rug) is where we rest after a long day. But what happens when burden and distress seep in, making comfort prickly? Jyoti's commissioned work invites us to enter a protective space between rest and play.

A gallery corner painted dark grey: a fringed brown cloth strung across the wall like a sagging roof, a rough pink-and-yellow wooden chair below it, and two small paintings on the left wall.

Remains of a home

What remains when a home is taken away? Aadil Farooq Malik, who lost his house to a road expansion project, explores the shifting meanings of belonging through architectural remnants.

A dried winged seed pod with two papery blades and a hard round kernel, lying on a white surface.

Puwali - Play to Plant

Puwali means 'kid'—the start of life in its simplest form. Two NID artists highlight how every seed, every beginning, carries its own future through visual storytelling and hands-on workshops.

An installation in an open yard: a woven jute hanging painted with a figure in a yellow and red dress, split cane fanning out around it, and shaped pieces of wood laid out on the ground below.

Ialong, hakum!

Two artists from India's Northeast explore gender norms and the nurturing essence of nature through wood, bamboo, and rich indigenous traditions. Nature as refuge, difference as beauty.

A pale painting of a shallow stony river, coloured threads strung across the rocks and a white cloth net stretched over the water.

The River that Remembers

A river rushes through nostalgia, holding memories of childhood, family picnics, sweet water through orchards of the heart. Now it carries thirst and sorrow. Three Kashmiri artists create an elegy.

A room hung with huge charcoal-dark cloth panels of figures and rows of dark shapes, with a pale printed robe draped over a stand in the lit corner.

Uncanny: The Quiet Rusty Sign

Rust stains echo fading memories. Ash and jute speak of war's violence. Two artists transform decay into temporal progression, where the familiar becomes strange.

Broken plastic toys — a red lorry, a tractor, a doll's head and limbs — set into the crumbling brick and plaster of an old wall.

Where Memories Are Immured

The playground has turned into a battlefield. Five artists from Aligarh Muslim University create a poignant installation asking: did I do something wrong, Mother?

A large hanging textile work: three smudged cream panels above, and below them woven red and black bands with loose threads trailing down.

Shifting Landscapes

As the Lepcha language fades and the land erodes, Reppandee Lepcha weaves together paper pulp, rice paper, and hemp wool to ask: how do communities retain relevance in a shifting world?

A framed painting of a woman with red hair kneeling beside a small pool set into the floor, holding a bunch of spring onions, with a pink cat-headed figure standing behind her.

Labour of the Imagined

Imagination as resistance. Vineetha W explores creative labour beyond political binaries, granting equal significance to humans, animals, and nature in intimate, egalitarian paintings.

A sculpture on a white plinth: a cluster of faces and rounded forms modelled in vivid ultramarine blue, rising in a curve.

Is it Sunset in the himalayas

Is Ladakh facing enlightenment's dawning or fading into endless night? Kundan Gyatso's terracotta work carries the visual language of Thangkas and the weight of melting glaciers.

Two long rows of small framed drawings on a white wall, each showing a figure in a different everyday moment.

Capturing Slowness

In Mumbai's frantic pace, women carve brief stillnesses in local train ladies' coaches. Diya Joseph sketches these fleeting moments of rest across two cities, two rhythms.

A row of small framed photographs standing along a low white ledge, a large dim projection of a seated figure filling the wall above them.

Through their eyes

From Shimla—once the summer capital of British India—Vikas Kumar examines how being watched shapes who we are, and what it means to return the gaze.

A mound of small clay figures and tower shapes built up like a hillside village, with a knotted clay form hanging on a wire above it.

Sacred Scapes

Brick carries the weight of loss and transition. Urgain Zawa's installation from Ladakh links melting glaciers, paper-mache horns, and ancestral rituals against environmental disaster.

A gallery corner covered in overlapping pale discs of pressed fibre, with thin bone-like objects and slabs of the same material propped against the wall and floor.

Known Bodies, Unknown Futures

Water hyacinth—invasive, resilient weed—becomes the material for Likitha R Jain's sculptures exploring material ecology and post-humanist thinking.

A framed thangka painting of White Tara seated on a lotus, a red halo behind her, set against blue sky, clouds and green hills.

Thangka: Quiet Resistance

In a world of fast-paced urbanization, Yangchen Dolker's Thangka paintings of Dolkar and Jamyang become quiet acts of resistance—art forms that demand slowness.

A painted tiger mask with bared teeth and a blue animal mask resting on a heap of cut branches and logs, in a white room hung with framed photographs.

Bohada

Where Mumbai meets Gujarat, Palghar's Adivasi communities face displacement. Gaurav Tumbada's 'Bohada' celebrates the Waghoba—the tiger guardian—as a figure of resilience.

A large painting mounted on a peeling plaster wall, showing a bicycle loaded with a big metal milk churn, with dogs sprawled on the ground beside it.

Milk Distributors

The bicycle—humble two-wheeled 'friend of the poor'—becomes a vehicle of freedom in Abhijit Das's large-scale paintings and sculptural work exploring mobility, care, and nourishment.

A yellow handcart loaded with brass band instruments — a big drum, a snare, a coiled horn and a wide bell lit from inside — parked against a peeling wall hung with small painted panels.

The People's Orchestra

From a humble handcart in Satana to processions across Maharashtra—Rutuja Sonawane traces her father's 50-year journey with 'Swar Samrat', a brass band rooted in Ambedkarite ideals.

Twelve black-framed prints hung in two long rows on a white wall, each a close-up in stark black and white of a cracked, flaking surface.

Residual Marks

Termite damage becomes a way to think through internal conflict. Neelam Saini transforms wood and paper pulp into lattice-like forms where surfaces hold as much as they succumb.

A quilted fabric panel showing a woman in a yellow dress lying asleep on layered cloth, the bedding pieced from rose-printed and patterned scraps.

Thinking Threads

Working with discarded clothing, Kerala-based artist Harsha P S cuts, sews, and repurposes textiles into forms of protest. See her work at Kochi Biennale, Kerala

Small twisted sculptures of pale bone-like pieces strung on wires across a white wall, each throwing a long insect-like shadow.

What absence carries

Three artists from NID Ahmedabad and MSU Baroda trace the quiet terrain where memory, grief, and body entwine through soft sculptures, drawings, and video.

A video still of a person curled on their side, seen from above against a dark red brick floor.

To Be Who? Eight Artists Unravel Identity

Eight artists from Shimla explore identity through video and cyanotype—asking not who we are, but how we become and unbecome through inherited stories.

A tall figure built from an old typewriter and painted panels, with long jointed arms, a red bulb for a nose and a tangle of wire above its head.

The Conference of Anti-Apocryphal Beings

Twelve Kashmir students summon folklore figures that refuse erasure—winter demons, forest spirits, and the Braid-Chopper—in a sculptural "conference" that's forensic, political, and unforgettable.

A heap of small hollow terracotta forms, pitted and pierced with holes, piled loose across a gallery floor.

15,000 Expressions of Fragility

15,000 terracotta pieces, each sold for one rupee. Durgesh Prajapati and 14 Kumhar artisans transform traditional pottery into powerful contemporary art.

A dark painted scene of a river bank at dusk: uniformed men with rifles advancing on scattered unclothed figures among the reeds and banana plants.

Simulation & Abor Wars

Ejum Riba examines Indigenous erasure and the history of the Adi people in "Simulation & Abor Wars." These paintings for Students' Biennale Kochi explore the complexities of the British Raj, decolonial practice, and the personal family histories that shape our view of the past.

A low wall of small wooden blocks built across a woven mat, some blocks fallen loose in front, with photographs and Bengali text on the wall behind.

Wor(l)d Building Exercise

Group 7+1 Collective presents "Wor(l)d Building Exercise" at Students’ Biennale Kochi 2024. This interactive installation invites visitors to build metaphorical cities with inscribed wooden blocks, highlighting workers and narratives often made invisible by progress.

Dozens of cockroach-like sculptures made from dried brown leaves, with thin wire legs and antennae, scattered across a white floor.

Re-Seen Cockroach

Sharan B transforms what most ignore—dried leaves, fish bones, and wood scraps—into delicate sculptures like "Re-Seen Cockroach." This work at Students’ Biennale Kochi invites us to find beauty in overlooked wonders and reconsider the creatures we often dismiss.

A small dark table rigged with wires in a bare room, a smudged black circle printed on the tiled floor and an ink-marked cloth hanging on the wall behind.

Who is the Print-er?

Anurag Singraur transforms discarded printers into "rod-bots" in "Who is the Print-er?" for Students’ Biennale Kochi. This kinetic installation explores the labor of creation and the poetry of e-waste, turning mechanical movement into art.

A gallery corner: a painted wooden cupboard stacked with folded, brightly patterned cloth, a line of black ants painted up the wall beside it, and two carved wooden stools holding small tins.

Between Rooms

A collaboration by Astha Tiwari, Subham Das, and Sagarika Sarkar exploring the intimate architecture of home. Using wood, canvas, and found objects, "Between Rooms" asks if our bodies become archives of memory. A hauntingly familiar installation from Banaras Hindu University at Kochi Biennale

A wall work: a row of empty white shirts hanging above a painted field of ripe wheat, from which a single pair of legs in thick woollen socks rises without a body.

Inheritance of the Hand

Inheritance of the Hand by Mohammad Riyaz and Aman Kumar Bavariya uses manjarpat fabric to explore colonial resistance, farmer struggles, and memory. This collaboration for Students’ Biennale Kochi 2024 turns raw muslin into a powerful canvas of history and dignity