Mattancherry Biennale Evening Walk

Mattancherry is where Kochi’s royal history, port city trade, and contemporary art sit almost on top of one another. This second-half Biennale walk begins at Mattancherry Palace, the seat of the Kochi Rajas, whose walls are lined with some of the finest Kerala murals in the country. Built by the Portuguese around the mid-16th century as a gift to Raja Veera Kerala Varma and later renovated by the Dutch, the palace became the coronation venue for the Cochin kings and a key space where local art, ritual and power met. Its quadrangular nālukettu layout and vivid murals of the Ramayana and other Hindu myths show how royal patronage nurtured temple-style painting traditions.

From this historical canvas, we step into the living Biennale cluster of Monsoon Culture, Cube artSpace, Anand Warehouse, SMS Hall, KVJ Rice Godown, and finally Armaan Café on Jew Street. Over roughly 2 km of walking, we spend about 20 minutes in each venue, giving you enough time to engage with the works without feeling rushed.

You can either:

• Begin your Biennale journey with this afternoon walk and then join the Fort Kochi morning walk the next day, or
• Continue directly from the morning Fort Kochi tour into this evening Mattancherry walk for a full day of art, history and conversation.

The Unventured Difference

Unventured curates experiences that look at Biennale venues as living narratives, not just exhibition halls. On this walk, your tour leader weaves together three strands:

Royal Patronage & Local Art
We begin at Mattancherry Palace, where murals, portraits and ceremonial objects reveal how the Kochi Rajas supported visual storytelling, ritual art and courtly culture. This anchors everything else you’ll see in a deeper historical frame.

The Port, the People & the Godowns
From rice and pepper godowns to new media installations, you’ll experience how old trading infrastructures—warehouses, courtyards, side streets—have been reimagined as spaces for contemporary art and community-based projects.

Contemporary Voices in an Old Neighbourhood
Across Monsoon Culture, Cube artSpace, Anand Warehouse, SMS Hall and KVJ Rice Godown, you’ll meet works that speak of climate, migration, labour, memory and identity—always grounded in the textures of Mattancherry’s multicultural everyday.

By the end of the walk, the Biennale stops feeling like a distant “art event” and becomes a conversation between royal pasts, working-class godowns, global artists and you.

Who can do this tour?

This walk is ideal if you:

• Are curious about how contemporary art emerges from real histories and streets
• Enjoy slow, reflective travel with time to stand, look and discuss
• Want to understand Mattancherry as more than “Jew Town shopping”
• Are comfortable walking about 2 km in warm evening weather

You don’t need prior art history knowledge—just curiosity and comfortable footwear.

Tour at a Glance

• Start time: 3:30 PM
• Start point: Mattancherry Palace
• End point: Near Armaan Café, Jew Street (Mattancherry)
• Duration: ~2.5 hours
• Distance covered: ~2 km on foot
• Activity: Guided walking tour through Biennale venues and heritage lanes
• Tour intensity: Low (urban walking and standing in galleries)
• Theme: Royal patronage, port-city histories, contemporary art and identity
• Best season: During Kochi-Muziris Biennale (December–March)

Can be done:

• As a standalone afternoon walk, or
• As the second half following the Fort Kochi morning Biennale walk.

What you’ll experience

Mattancherry Palace – Where Kings, Murals and Memory Meet
Popularly known as the Dutch Palace, this 16th-century structure was built by the Portuguese as a gift to the Raja of Cochin and later renovated by the Dutch. Its nālukettu courtyard layout, intricate wooden ceilings and vivid murals of the Ramayana and other myths make it one of India’s most important repositories of Kerala mural art. Portraits of Cochin Rajas, royal palanquins, ceremonial umbrellas and coronation artefacts reveal how art, ritual and governance intertwined here.

Here, your tour leader introduces how royal support allowed local artistic traditions to flourish—and how this legacy echoes in today’s Biennale.

Monsoon Culture – The Emperor’s New Clothes

Just off Jew Street, Monsoon Culture hosts a collateral exhibition by designer-researcher Aswin Prakash. His project, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, uses garments, textiles, text and archival references to examine how clothing has shaped Malayali identity—who gets to look respectable, who labours, and whose bodies are disciplined by caste and class.

In this venue, you’ll encounter fashion not as trend, but as quiet politics—stitched, unstitched and re-imagined.

Cube artSpace – Vivan Sundaram & the Edam Cluster

At Cube artSpace, two strands of the Biennale converge:

• A special project on the late artist Vivan Sundaram, “Six Stations of a Life Pursued”—a photography-based installation that revisits his decades of work with memory, archives and the body.
• Part of Edam, a three-venue exhibition of 36 Kerala and diaspora artists curated by Aishwarya Suresh and K.M. Madhusudhanan, which examines home, displacement, labour and the sea from distinctly Malayali perspectives.
• Your guide will unpack how these works converse with Mattancherry’s own histories of migration and port-city life.

Anand Warehouse – Central Exhibition, Sensory Architecture

One of the three central exhibition locations this edition, Anand Warehouse is a soaring godown in the heart of Mattancherry. Many visitors experience this as the Biennale’s most physically immersive venue—filled with large sculptures, sound environments and light-based works that respond to its industrial architecture.

Here you might step into installations built from salvaged industrial materials, walk through rooms where sound and light re-stage the memory of ships and cargo, or encounter performance residues that treat the warehouse itself as a body in motion.

SMS Hall – Performance, Bodies & Time

SMS Hall is both gallery and stage. In this edition it hosts performances like Mandeep Raikhy’s “Hallucinations of an Artefact”, a work that uses dance, text and installation to think about what remains when objects, bodies and histories are repeatedly handled and archived.

Your time here is an invitation to sit with process—not just finished “objects”—and to see how performance and installation bleed into one another.

KVJ Rice Godown – 111 Markaz & Café

At KVJ Rice Godown (111 Markaz & Café), a working warehouse becomes a hybrid space where exhibitions, conversations and everyday logistics overlap. It’s listed as one of the Biennale’s Mattancherry venues on Bazaar Road, hosting projects that continue the Edam and Invitations threads—often featuring Kerala artists experimenting with film, sound, drawing and found materials within the rough texture of a rice godown.

Your guide will encourage you to look not just at the art, but at the building: sacks, beams, light-wells, and how artists are using them as collaborators.

Armaan Café – Closing Point on Jew Street

We end near Armaan Café, home to Armaan Collective, a collateral venue that has hosted group shows by initiatives like Rizq Art and others focusing on new voices from Kerala and the wider region.

This is not a sit-down food stop, but a gentle closing point on Jew Street: from here you’re free to wander into antique shops, tiny galleries and heritage buildings, carrying the day’s conversations with you.

Sample Itinerary – 3:30 PM Start

(Exact sequence may vary depending on Biennale programming and venue timings.)

• 3:30 – 4:00 PM – Meet your tour leader at Mattancherry Palace; introduction to the murals, royal history and how they frame today’s Biennale.
• 4:00 – 4:20 PM – Walk to Monsoon Culture; explore The Emperor’s New Clothes and talk about clothing, caste and Malayali identity.
• 4:20 – 4:40 PM – Continue to Cube artSpace for Vivan Sundaram’s Six Stations of a Life Pursued and selected Edam works.
• 4:40 – 5:00 PM – Head to Anand Warehouse for large-scale installations and sensorial pieces responding to the godown architecture.
• 5:00 – 5:20 PM – Visit SMS Hall; engage with performance-centred works and time-based installations.
• 5:20 – 5:40 PM – Explore KVJ Rice Godown (111 Markaz & Café); focus on Edam/Invitations projects and how artists use the working godown.
• 5:40 – 6:00 PM – Conclude near Armaan Café on Jew Street; closing reflections and suggestions for how to keep exploring Mattancherry.