When African Authority Appears in India

While images from Art Basel Miami continued to filter across my feed, Kochi Biennale was asking something else entirely.

In an art world still structured around white cubes and white authority, Kochi offered a glimpse of what South–South cooperation can look like in practice.

Not because Miami is irrelevant — far from it — but because attention shapes how legitimacy forms.

Within that system, value tends to follow the same paths. Certain places and fairs — Venice, Basel, and Frieze — continue to shape what gets attention, while other locations are more often treated as sources of material or inspiration. Recognition and legitimacy gather in those centers, positioning much of the rest of the art world in orbit rather than in relation.

Kochi behaves differently.

Part of that difference lies in how the Kochi-Muziris Biennale was built. Founded by Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu — practicing artists rather than administrators — it has long operated as a space where risk is not an afterthought but a condition of possibility. Curatorial authority is extended without requiring long institutional pedigrees, and experimentation is not framed as deviation from the norm, but as the norm itself.

That orientation changes what becomes visible — and who is allowed to appear without explanation.

Seeing Ibrahim Mahama ranked #1 on the ArtReview Power 100 in 2025 was a significant moment — the first time an artist from the African continent has led the list. What felt even more consequential was encountering Mahama centered in India.

This did not read as representation or cultural exchange. It read as recognition. African artistic authority appears here without being routed through a Western intermediary, without needing translation or justification. Africa does not arrive as a theme. It arrives as a peer.

What matters isn’t how Mahama was persuaded to attend, but what Kochi made possible. An artist-led biennale, curated by a fellow practitioner, offered a context where African artistic authority did not need to be translated through Western validation — where presence reads less as invitation and more as recognition.

Mahama’s installation in Kochi worked with locally sourced sacks marked by Indian labour and trade, allowing those histories to remain intact rather than overwritten.

That alignment was made possible within an artist-led curatorial framework shaped by Nikhil Chopra, working alongside platforms such as HH Art Spaces — contexts where practice is met on its own terms rather than mediated for legibility.

What if Africa and India chose to collaborate like this —rather than orienting themselves around Western fairs and biennales?

Kochi does not offer a model.It offers a glimpse.

That glimpse is worth sitting with.

Jonah Batambuze is a Ugandan-American interdisciplinary artist and cultural architect working across installation, film, writing, and education. His practice examines Black–South Asian entanglements, diasporic memory, and the afterlives of caste and colonialism, using ritual, gesture, and archival inquiry as material.

As founder of the BlindianProject, Batambuze develops long-form artistic and educational works that challenge systems of erasure while proposing new frameworks for cultural recognition and solidarity.

Batambuze speaks and facilitates internationally on Black–South Asian solidarities, caste and colonial legacies, diasporic identity, and cultural resistance.

For speaking engagements, workshops, or media inquiries:

jonah@blindian-project.com