Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu opened the Kochi Biennale in 2012 with a stellar installation by Subodh Gupta that consisted of a large Kerala kettuvallam ( large boat used for transporting rice ) filled with vessels, utensils, and objects of everyday idioms.

1. Kerala boat installations
Subodh Gupta’s

2. Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu opened the Kochi Biennale in 2012 with a stellar
installation by Subodh Gupta that consisted of a large Kerala kettuvallam ( large boat used for
transporting rice ) filled with vessels, utensils, and objects of everyday idioms. ‘What does the
vessel contain that is not in the river, it took the title from Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī’s
excerpt from ‘The Sufi Path of Love. The Kochi Biennale installation was shown at Hauser &
Wirth’s Savile Row gallery in 2013 and sold for a fortune to the Arario Museum.

3. Simple found object
In the same year, Subodh created another installation of a large Kerala fisherman’s boat
that had only black water pots hanging and tumbling out of the majestic boat.
In an interview to me after the Kochi Biennale, Subodh said: “When I look at a pot or a
utensil, I am not showing only the pot, but the stories of the people who used the pot or
utensil. A simple found object holds so many stories within; about their lives, their fears
and their joys.”
The utensil/pot for Subodh has long been a stand-in, a metaphor for a human life. At the
Kochi Biennale, the traditional boat from Kerala, measuring over 20 metres, broad in its
middle, straddled the entire stretch of the gallery when shown in London. Filled from bow
to stern with chairs, beds, window frames, fishing nets, plastic jars, cans, an old radio,
cooking pots and pans, suitcases and a bicycle, it had an elegiac eloquence as it echoed
the idea of the microcosm – the containing of an entire universe within the human soul
(reflected in Rumi’s poem). Subodh said: “ This boat with belongings was a microcosm
containing one person’s entire existence, bundled together and ready to set sail.”
The boat and all the found objects were as much about cultural dislocation prevalent in an
era of shifting powers, as well as personal histories. According to critics, the Kochi
Biennale’s ’What does the vessel contain, that the river does not’ evoked the conflicting
feelings of belonging and displacement, movement and stability, and explores the liminal
space between these states of being.

5. Jal Mein Kumbh
The boat for Subodh was not just a simple mode of transportation, but it evolved into an
extension of the greater paradigm of survival, sustenance, and livelihood. His second boat
installation Jal Mein Kumbh, Kumbh Mein Jal Hai (2012), had a global insignia. The hanging
black pots echoed the aftermath of globalization and industrialization. In a subtle way,
Subodh was illustrating issues of modernization and loss of cultural differences, issues of
migration and belonging, issues of consumerism and waste, issues of need and want,
subsistence, and gluttony. The boat with its multiple brass pots suddenly stood for the
politics of economics. This installation was unveiled at Subodh’s Paris
Retrospective, Monnaie de Paris.
Both the boats spoke at different levels but cut through generations as they addressed
concerns of a meager daily wage existence. For Subodh, the installation artist,
representations of travel and transport are all tied to notions of migration and exodus. The
first boat spoke of an entire universe in a boat. The second spoke of the pilgrim who rows for
everyday necessities. In some ways, the charismatic brass black pots brought back
Kabir’s doha ‘Is ghat mein saat samundar’ ( In this vessel lies the seven seas).

7. Conspicuous consumerism
For years now, Subodh has created installations that reaffirm his fascination for found objects because
what is more important are the traces left on these objects by their previous owners, turning them
from inanimate utensils into items charged with stories of lives lived, visualized by scratches and dents.
It would not be wrong to state that the tension between container and content serves as the metaphor
of concern for consumer society’s outcasts; for economic exiles, in particular, that must be content with
the crumbs of a feast from which they are excluded. Over the years with the language of the ordinary,
the success of Subodh as an installation artist lies in his ability to create a spectacle that speaks to
every human eye that gazes. Therein lies the duality of experience and expression. In using the pots
and utensils, Subodh releases them from their functions and draws our attention to the stories they
hold.
Narrative layers
As viewers, we can look at these two works with cynical skepticism, we can also look deeper into the
several layers of narration that coexist and unfold, stemming from the use of objects as vehicles for
identity and memory. Then in the language of the ordinary lies many a tale. Subodh has for long used
literary allusions to poet Kabir as titles for his installations that travel many seas.
For Subodh, Kabir is a great universal mystical poet, whose vision of the One transcends all religions.
His couplets are recited by so many transcend time. For an artist who can recite Kabir’s couplets by
heart, these two installations of Kerala boats weave links between container and content, between the
dualities of life and the living.