Mattanchéré Summer Salon: What to See at Muziris Contemporary After the Biennale

A salon, in the old art-world sense, is a group show. The French invented the format in the 1600s. Paint, sculpt, weave, print. Hang it together. Let visitors wander. The Mattanchéré Summer Salon takes that idea, drops it into Jew Town, and gives it a Portuguese-era spelling of Mattancherry as the name.

A pink sign reading 'Mattanchere Summer Salon, 17 May 2026' at Muziris Contemporary. — The Mattanchéré Summer Salon at Muziris Contemporary — what stayed on the walls after the Biennale.

The Summer Salon is a breather. Less heavy curatorial concept, more "here is a roomful of work we want you to see this summer." If you missed the Biennale, this is a good place to keep looking. If you saw the Biennale, this is a good place to slow down.

Latheesh Lakshman: a Malayali tongue twister on a wall

You start with Kashtappettishtappedenda, a title that is itself a tongue twister, and that is the point. "Kashtap-petti-ishtap-pedenda" is a very colloquial and often playful or sarcastic phrase. People usually say this when they notice someone is pretending to like something (like a piece of art, a movie, or even a person) just to be polite. It's the Malayalam equivalent of saying, "Hey, if you don't like it, you really don't have to force it!"

Latheesh Lakshman is a Kerala-born designer and visual artist who has won a Cannes Lion for his ad work. His pieces in this room work with Malayalam type, illustration, and dry humour. Tongue twisters pinned down as visual objects. If you grew up speaking Malayalam, you will get the joke. If you did not, you will still feel the rhythm of it. I did. Did you?

Raj Chowdhury: a painter who writes his own poems

Raj Chowdhury's Why? is a large canvas in pinks, pale blues, and greens. Raj is a self-taught artist from Khanyan in West Bengal, born in 1983. He writes his own poetry and paints around it. Some of his canvases have his handwritten verse braided into the image itself.

A wooden bench on a tiled floor facing a colourful abstract painting of houses on a gallery wall at Muziris Contemporary. — The Mattanchéré Summer Salon at Muziris Contemporary — what stayed on the walls after the Biennale.

The thing to know about his work is that the realism came first, in his teenage years, and the abstraction came later. Both still show up. Lines and colours overlap until they hold each other in place. He has a second wall in this exhibition (more on that below), so make a mental note of Why? and check the differences when you circle back.

Digvijaysinh Jadeja: prints that look like weather

Digvijaysinh Jadeja's prints take up a full wall. He works across painting, viscosity printing, chine-collé, and layered image-making. His prints look like landscapes seen through fog or memory, which is the point. He starts with small remembered moments and lets the printmaking process do half the work. Marks that he did not plan. Colour shifts. Accidents he kept.

If you have ever tried printmaking, you know how much of it is a conversation with the medium. Jadeja is good at listening.

A three-panel faded blue-green painting at Muziris Contemporary showing ghostly gold figures and trees in a park setting. — The Mattanchéré Summer Salon at Muziris Contemporary — what stayed on the walls after the Biennale.

Sabiha Dohadwala: woven memory, up close

Sabiha Dohadwala's textile pieces ask you to step closer. She did her BFA in Fiber and Material Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work is about how memory fades, how places you have visited come back as fragments, and how weaving holds those fragments together for a while before they slip again.

Two framed pieces of textured handmade paper artwork stitched with coloured thread, hanging on a white gallery wall at Muziris Contemporary. — The Mattanchéré Summer Salon at Muziris Contemporary — what stayed on the walls after the Biennale.

It felt to me like the quietest wall in the room. Worth the slowdown. I needed that badly that day.

Latheesh Lakshman again, this time as a sculpture

From Sabiha's fibres, the exhibition loops back to Latheesh. But this time it is Oldman and Cat, a ceramic sculpture coated in automotive paint. Suprematism meets cubism meets a Kochi summer afternoon. An old man and a cat as blocky silhouettes against vivid planes. Sharp edges. Umbrellas. The kind of figure you have probably walked past in Mattancherry without noticing.

Mansoor Mansoori: Baroda at night

A dark painting at Muziris Contemporary of a lone figure standing under a streetlight on a road at night. — The Mattanchéré Summer Salon at Muziris Contemporary — what stayed on the walls after the Biennale.

Mansoor Mansoori specialises in nightscapes. In the Summer Salon, his canvases capture the strange intimacy of a city after dark. Sodium vapour streetlamps. Empty roads. The mood of being awake when the rest of the building is not. Oil on canvas, controlled brushwork, backgrounds that fade into ink. Half-revealed figures caught mid-step.

Where most of the show is about colour and pattern, Mansoor is about absence and shadow. A useful contrast halfway around the room.

How to plan your visit

Google Map & Details 📍

The gallery is on AB Salem Road in Jew Town, a five-minute walk from the Paradesi Synagogue. Pair it with the spice market, lunch at Kayees, and a slow walk down Bazaar Road. If you are doing a gallery hop, our guide to the Viewing Room next door covers more artists. For the wider Mattancherry food and history loop, our Mattancherry archive is a good starting point.