Just weeks after opening in mid-December, India’s top biennial, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, was forced to close briefly following protests by Christian groups in response to a painting depicting the Last Supper.
The painting by Tom Vattakuzhy was not included in the main biennial exhibition, “For the Time Being,” but rather in a recurring side exhibition also organized by the Kochi Biennale Foundation called “EDAM,” which highlights the practices of artists and collectives based in Kerala, the south Indian state where Kochi is located. “EDAM” is staged at multiple sites across Kochi; Vattakuzhy’s painting was shown at the Garden Convention Centre, a short walk from the biennial’s main venue.
Kerala is home to India’s largest Christian population—some 6 million people, or about 18 percent of the state’s total population—owing to its long history as a trading port with the Middle East and as a major landing point for Portuguese, British, and Dutch missionaries and traders. It is also said that Thomas, one of the original 12 disciples of Jesus, proselytized in Kerala after arriving in 52 CE.
In a social media post, Biju Josey Karumanchery, secretary of the Kerala Latin Catholic Association, said that Vattakuzhy’s painting “insults our faith.” He also questioned why public funds—which are critical to organizing the biennial—were used for a work he described as offensive. The Syro-Malabar Church, an Eastern Catholic Church in Kerala, raised similar concerns, according to the Indian news outlet Clarion. In a letter circulated to public officials, the Latin Catholic Council of Kerala called the painting a “distorted and inappropriate relic of the Last Supper” and called for its removal.
Vattakuzhy, for his part, has said he did not intend to offend. “Born into a Christian family, most of my works have been inspired by the humanism seen in Christian values. This artwork is an extension of that thought process and not a distortion of the Last Supper as alleged by those opposing it,” he said, according to the Indian English-language daily the Hindu.
He further said that the painting was inspired by a play by Kerala-based playwright C. Gopan, which itself was based on a poem about Mata Hari, the Dutch dancer executed as a German spy by the French during World War I.
The curators of “EDAM,” K. M. Madhusudhanan and Aishwarya Suresh, along with biennial president Bose Krishnamachari, defended the work in a joint statement, saying that the foundation would not remove Vattakuzhy’s painting, as doing so would amount to censorship.
Biennial organizers said exhibitions would reopen on January 2, though it was not clear at press time whether they had.
