First Look - Chennai Photo Biennale Edition III

Titled Maps of Disquiet, 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.

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’.

The curatorial team working on this edition consists of Arko Datto (Kolkata), Bhooma Padmanabhan (Chennai), Boaz Levin (Berlin) and Kerstin Meincke (Essen).