‘The wound is where the light enters’: Kader Attia on idea of ‘repair’ as he shapes Kochi Biennale 2027

Kochi: As a young girl in Algeria, Kader Attia’s mother found a way to see the world outside through a window she had been forbidden to look through. Her uncle had painted the glass dark beige so she could not see the street. She would scratch away the paint, creating small openings through which she could glimpse the world outside.

Years later, that childhood memory became part of the artistic universe of her son, the internationally acclaimed Algerian-French artist and curator who is now beginning to shape the seventh edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB).

The scratch was an injury to the surface. But it was also what allowed the light in.
“The wound is where the light enters you,” Attia told the media at ‘Meet the Curator’ event in Kochi on Wednesday, quoting the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi.

The image offers an insight into the ideas that could inform Attia’s approach to KMB 2027 as he talked about the questions of repair, memory, history, colonial legacies and the traces left behind by human experience. However, his formal curatorial proposition is yet to come and it will be unveiled in Mumbai on November 14.

Attia is currently in Kochi for his first research visit as curator, visiting Biennale sites and meeting artists, cultural practitioners and others as he begins developing the next edition, scheduled to open in December 2027.

Repair without erasing the wound
For more than two decades, repair has been central to Attia’s artistic practice. But he does not see it simply as a technique or metaphor.
“I still think it’s not a concept, I think it’s a phenomenon,” he said.

He is fascinated by objects and structures that have been broken and repaired with simple materials, where the damage remains visible. In his view, many pre-modern societies did not necessarily seek to make a repaired object appear untouched. The repair mattered, but so did the injury.

He argued that Modern Western society has often pursued the opposite ideal, the fantasy that repair means restoring something to a perfect state by erasing all evidence of damage.
“This erasure of the injury is a fantasy that has been sold to us,” he said. For Attia, the scar is therefore not simply evidence of damage. It is a trace of history.

That idea extends from the personal to the political. He spoke of the invisible traces left by ancestors, trauma and experience, and of the inner voices that continue to inhabit people even after those who created the memories are gone.
“The question of traces is very much what I put at the centre of my interest to understand the legacy of colonialism in the 21st century,” he said.

A curator reading Kochi
Attia’s ideas acquire another dimension in Kochi, a city whose history has been shaped by centuries of movement, trade and cultural exchange.

Growing up in Le Bourget, a Paris suburb inhabited by Algerian, Vietnamese, Indian, North African and Sub-Saharan communities, Attia said he learned to understand cultural diversity through observation.

“I didn’t learn ethnology at the university. I learned it by looking around when I was a kid,” he said. He has brought that same habit of observation to Kochi, walking through Fort Kochi and paying attention to its people, food and body language.

“There’s no one identity, there are identities,” he said. He described Kochi as a historic harbour shaped by movements across the Indian Ocean and the wider world. What interests him is the layering of cultures and communities that has accumulated over time.

For the curator, therefore, Kochi itself could become an important part of the research, not merely the setting in which the Biennale takes place, but a city whose own memories and traces may inform how he approaches the exhibition.

Art as a place to gather
Attia’s concerns also extend to the role of art in an increasingly digital world.

He said he is fascinated by artificial intelligence and technology, but questioned the passive use of AI in artistic creation. Recalling an experiment in which he asked AI to imagine an exhibition in a battlefield, he said the result was a predictable, systematic response.

For Attia, the difference lies in artistic intention. Algorithms can collect and reproduce vast amounts of human behavioural data, but an artist develops a language through experience, memory and intention.

“Before the AI, the artist should be an artist,” he said. That belief connects to how he sees the Biennale itself as a space for people of different languages, faiths, ages and backgrounds to come together and encounter one another.

Attia is no stranger to Kochi or KMB. He participated in Whorled Explorations during the 2014 KMB and Tangled Hierarchy in 2022, both curated by Biennale president Jitish Kallat. In 2025, he delivered the inaugural Vivan Sundaram Memorial Lecture.

At Wednesday’s interaction, Kallat, KBF Chairperson Venu V, KBF Trustee Adeeb Ahamed and CEO Thomas Varghese joined Attia as he spoke about his practice and his return to Kochi in his new role.

Dr Venu said Attia’s engagement with contemporary art and his interest in history, memory and culture resonate with the character of the Biennale. Ahamed described KMB as a collective endeavour and called for people in Kochi and across Kerala to participate in its next chapter.

The seventh edition is still taking shape. Attia’s curatorial proposition will be formally revealed only in November.

But his first conversations in Kochi have already opened a window into the questions he is carrying with him. What does a city remember, what gets erased, and what remains after a wound has been repaired?

For Attia, perhaps, the scar is not something to hide. It is part of the story and sometimes, it is where the light enters.