Saranraj Our Life, Our Music
This would have been the month when CPB Foundation opened the 3rd Edition of the Chennai Photo Biennale. However, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Biennale was postponed to December 2021 from its original schedule of December 9, 2020 - February 6, 2021. The curatorial team working on this edition consists of Arko Datto (Kolkata), Bhooma Padmanabhan (Chennai), Boaz Levin (Berlin) and Kerstin Meincke (Essen).
Titled Maps of Disquiet, the third edition of the Biennale will reflect on the exigencies of our times: resisting majoritarian impositions, ecological collapse, and technological dystopias by reclaiming pluralities of thought, voices, and art, and building new networks of solidarity and care.
Tobias Zielony From "Haus der Jugend", 2017
The site of the 'Great Trigonometrical Survey' of 1802, the first colonial attempt to measure and map the subcontinent, Chennai today is an arena of contested visions of a common future that resonates beyond. Anchoring itself in Chennai, the biennale will delve into the invisible realms of power and knowledge that shape our global present while simultaneously proposing the creation of resistant cartographies. It asks, whose resources? Whose rivers? Whose interests? Whose voices? Whose images?
The biennale brings together artists and practices that explore the representation of labour, urban imaginaries, the commons, economic and migratory flows, archaeology and mining, and what anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, describing growing hostility towards minorities across the world, refers to as a ‘fear of small numbers’.
Vamika Jain Image from ‘I TRAVEL THEREFORE I AM’
The first list of artists includes: Andreas Langfeld, Babu Eshwar Prasad, Gauri Gill, Hito Steyerl, Katrin Koenning, Lieko Shiga, Lisa Rave, Mohini Chandra, Nico Joana Weber, Rohini Devasher, Rory Pilgrim, Sanchayan Ghosh, Saranraj, Senthil Kumaran, Siva Sai Jeevanantham, Soumya Sankar Bose, Susanne Kriemann, Tobias Zielony, Vamika Jain, Vasudha Thozhur, Yuvan Aves.
For additional information and news updates please visit, edition3.chennaiphotobiennale.com
Image Courtesy The Artists
Senthil Kumaran From the project “Tamed Tuskersâ€