Beyond the Biennale: How murals are rewriting Kochi’s streets

Walk through Fort Kochi and Mattancherry to watch art, history and politics intersect on its walls.

“That is the unique nature of public art — the impermanence of it combined with the interventions of public interactions with a painting. It gives the painting another, different  life,” says Jinil Manikandan, artist and member of the Trespassers. His response to the question about the ephemerality of murals in public places — their vulnerablity to heat, dust, and rain. And of course the scope for destruction which makes one wonder if the effort is worth it.  

He illustrates his point with a previous work, a mural the collective painted in Copra Market in Kozhikode in 2021, where they drew the processes that brought a coconut to the market. “When we revisted the site some time later we noticed that coconuts were stacked against the wall we had painted, which we felt gave it a ‘lived/live’ kind of feeling,” he says.  

Coming to the present, Jinil references the mural on a wall in the compound of Cube Art Space in Mattancherry, a venue for Edam, where one of the collateral events of the Kochi Muziris Biennale is on.

The work in question by Trespassers, the Kerala-based collective of eight artists — Jinil, Vishnupriyan, Sreerag P, Ambady Kannan, Arjun Gopi, Pranav Pranav Prabhakaran, Bashar UK, and Jatin Latha Shaji. All Fine Arts students of Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady – is on a 20×35-foot wall and bright with details. In vivid shades of pink, green, blue and yellow, it is essentially a picture of life in the area with a dash of the surreal. Cue a cable of an airconditioner, which becomes a tightrope with a ropewalker on it, which turns into a sleeping tiger’s tail.

Their other work is on Armaan Collective’s water-facing wall inspired by the sights around — the anchored fishing boats, the people who live and work in the area with a generous dose of fantasy.

“We never go to a site with a ready story or a plan. The ‘story’ comes from the area’s lore and people. The picture grows onsite as we start,” says Jinil.

While, as part of the KMB’s The Island Mural Project, muralists/collectives from across the country like the Aravani Art Project, Osheen Siva, Munir Kabani and The Trespassers have painted the walls in and around Fort Kochi and Mattancherry, works of other artists are also adding to the ‘walls-as-a-gallery’ experience of these places. The Biennale’s stated intention with the project is to invite “everyone to experience the neighbourhood in a new light.”

Historically underground, murals are now a dominant form of public art. Often used as a tool of political and social expression, street art or public art is usually political. “Art is political, it has to be. Even when the artist claims to be apolitical, they are stating their politics,” says Jinil. 

In 2012 anonymous artist Guesswho, called the ‘Indian Banksy,’ started painting across Fort Kochi’s walls. Over the years, he has painted Michael Jackson dancing Kathakali, Mona Lisa in a chatta-mundu, Che Guevara dressed like a coolie, and Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and Vincent van Gogh in lungies about to paint houses.

Out of the gallery box

Neelu Sengupta, Storytelling Head of the Fearless Collective says that murals make art democratic and accessible: “It moves art outside the conventional white cube space of an art gallery.” This collective of women encourages participation to create public art with women or other unrepresented communities across the globe. The Fearless Collective, started by artist Shilo Shiv Suleman in 2012 encourages dialogue.

Though it coincided with the Biennale, this work is not part of it. Painted on the 200-metre wall of the Coast Guard office in Fort Kochi, it was done in collaboration with the local community. These works show large-scale portraits of the community — the fisherfolk, and those at the forefront of mangrove conservation.

“Community stories are crucial, whether they are to do with climate crisis, gender identity, peace building or social change,” Neelu says. The location is also deliberate, since the Indian Coast Guard is involved in marine conservation. The 16-odd Fearless Collective artists, women and non-binary persons, who worked on this are not just Indian but also from Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, these include members of the Ambassador Programme.  

Osheen Siva’s mural on the wall of Palm Fibre Pvt. Ltd on Calvathy Road, near Aspinwall House, worked in collaboration with two local artists Aslah KP and Muhammed Ali Jouhar. She says the work “engages with Dalit visuality and foregrounds caste-oppressed cultural forms and histories from Kerala and Tamil Nadu.”

Munir Kabani’s ‘A Wall of Love’, near Artshila, a venue for the Students’ Biennale, with its yellow and green horizontal stripes giving the illusory effect of a shuttered space, it has ‘love’ written in English and ‘sneham’ (Malayalam for love) written on it. It explores the tension between language and perception — how words and images can represent thought and also shape how we see. It is a popular spot for photos with locals and tourists. Superficially simplistic — it makes us question whether what we see is real.

The Aravani Art Project, an art collective led by trans-women and cis-women aims to create a space for people from the transgender community, has created murals in two places, the Women and Children Hospital Mattancherry and VKL Warehouse, featuring women in different stages of life going about the business of living.

Near Pepper House, ‘Walk Past You’ designed by US-based artist Reshidev RK, forces you to pause. While the digital art is by Reshidev, the painting is by Renjith Joseph and Arjun Ananth, who are part of Charly and the boys, the crew of Kochi-based artist Elwin Charly. “We wanted the history of Fort Kochi told visually as a mural, that is how this work came to be,” says Sandeep Johnson, who curated the piece. Intricately detailed in Reshidev’s signature style, it has nuggets of Fort Kochi’s history — Vasco Da Gama, a local woman sieving pepper, a Jewish woman in clothes typical of the period, and pillars inspired by those at St. Francis Basilica. 

It is not all serious, on Burgher Street in Fort Kochi take a look at ‘Amphibian Aesthetics’, a group show on at Ishaara House (Kashi Hallegua House), Jew Town. The painting, which is a recreation of Bengaluru-based graphic novelist Appupen’s work which is on show at Ishaara House. It is part of a multiplatform narrative connecting with audiences through print and murals, marked by the artists’ signature dark humour and pop aesthetics. According to Ishara Arts, “It probes identity politics, surveillance, ecological unease and the manufactured logics of propaganda.”

Another ‘invitation’ is painted on the wall outside Lakshmi Madhavan’s stunning installation, ‘Looming Bodies’, an exhibit of Kerala’s traditional handloom, which speaks about the handloom weavers of Balaramapuram. The mural shows what is ostensibly a weaver’s hands weaving gold kasavu.

And then there are some that are memorials like the one outisde Uru Art Harbour, Kappalandimukku, a recreation of a painting, Monk, by the late artist Midhun Mohan who passed away in 2023. Midhun’s works spoke of social and cultural issues prevalent in contemporary society, while some were an examination of the past, exploring stories embedded in history.

“If I were to pin point when such public art started drawing attention, I would peg it on the first biennale in 2012 when Guesswho’s works started showing up on the walls of Fort Kochi. Then it was more underground… Today the tradition continues, and in whichever form it takes, it is still political artistic expression,” says Sasi Kumar Vallikkadan of the Uru Artist Collective.

Even as the Kochi Muziris Biennale concludes on March 31, the murals will be around a little longer — part of our everyday life, long after the venues and warehouses empty.