FICA was pleased to continue collaborating with the Kochi Biennale Foundation for the fourth edition of the Students’ Biennale. The largest education initiative of the Kochi Biennale Foundation, the Students’ Biennale seeks to complement and strengthen the fine arts education system in India. Given the unprecedented challenges the world is facing currently owing to the pandemic, the Students’ Biennale platform remained committed to rethinking accessibility and making available restructured systems of support to students and institutions more than ever. For the fourth edition, the programme has been rethought to function as an online exhibition while also developing other meeting grounds like workshops and interactions to engage with the circumstances that students and educators are facing presently.

The fourth edition was curated by a team of five artists and art educators – Adip Dutta, Archana Hande, Manoj Vyloor, Suresh K Nair and Vasudha Thozhur. This team comes with long years of engagement with art-making as well as working with students and young practitioners.

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, this edition of the Students’ Biennale is hosted online, and the online exhibition opened on 21 February 2021. Titled ‘States of Disarray: Practice as Restitution’ the online exhibition is a response to an environmental and social crisis of unimaginable proportions. All sections of the art community have made commendable efforts to address issues arising from the resulting confusion; similarly, the curations that comprise this particular edition of the Students’ Biennale (2021), have each negotiated the challenges presented through distinct perspectives that nonetheless arise from a common ground.

The Biennale included an exhibition forum as well as workshop programmes. All components of the exhibition, including communication between students and curators and working towards the display process were carried out online. The curatorial team engaged with students across the digital divide working with accessible interfaces, and students also received technical and documentation inputs to work with the digital medium. In addition to the exhibition platform, a parallel programme of workshops was also organised for participants as well as other students. The workshops were realised by the Students’ Biennale curators along with guest faculty.

Click here to visit the interactive exhibition forum online.

Curatorial Team

Adip Dutta is an artist based in Kolkata. He studied at the University of Calcutta and Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata. His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in Kolkata, Dubai, London, Tokyo and New Delhi, among other places. Adip is also a member of the Faculty of Arts at Rabindra Bharati University.

Archana Hande holds degrees in Fine Arts from Visva Bharati, Santiniketan and MS University, Baroda. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held in Bombay, Perth, Rome and New Delhi. She has also shown in numerous biennials and galleries, including in Jakarta, Guangzhou, and Yokohama. Archana is currently based in Bangalore.

Manoj Vyloor is an artist working between Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram. He completed his post-graduation in Graphic Arts from MS University, Baroda and is currently the Principal of the College of Fine Arts, Thiruvananthapuram. He has had solo exhibitions in Kochi, Baroda and Paris, and has also shown in exhibitions around the world, including in London, New Delhi, Dubai, Kuala Lumpur and Bombay.

Suresh K Nair has studied at the Institute of Mural Painting, Guruvayur, FTII, Pune, Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan, and Temple University, Philadelphia. His mural work can be seen in several countries besides India, including the UK, Bangladesh, USA, Portugal and the UAE. Suresh teaches at the Faculty of Visual Arts, Banaras Hindu University, Banaras.

Vasudha Thozhur studied at the College of Arts and Crafts, Madras, and at the School of Art and Design at Croydon College, UK. Her work has been shown in exhibitions around the world, including in Berlin, Bombay, Bern, and Chicago. Her institutional work has involved teaching and juries at MSU Baroda, NID Ahmedabad and IICD Jaipur. She presently teaches at the Shiv Nadar University, Dadri.