Dr. Shwetal A. Patel: Establishing the “People’s Biennale” in Kerala, India

As one of the founding members of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, how did you come to this project? My background in visual arts goes back to the late 1990s and my time as a student in East London. Around this time I began working with the musician Talvin Singh O.B.E as an art director, and this is when I first met one of the artist co-founders of Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Bose Krishnamachari. Bose and I became good friends in the subsequent years and we worked together on various projects in the following decades. In the late 2000s I began advising the Ministry of Culture (Government of India) to realize an Indian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale . My interest in biennials began to flourish around this period and I was invited to help develop India’s first biennial in the summer of 2010. Being invited to work on India’s first biennial must have been super exciting, was your previous experience relevant to this scene? My experience leading up to this point was fairly diverse – I had worked in music, fashion and studied film – but art was always my primary interest and passion. I didn’t have any biennial-making experience, apart from visiting exhibitions such as documenta and Venice Biennale over the years, so I very much learned by doing and seeing. Since 2010 I have been involved with…