Deep sea, Deep time by Athina Koumparouli will be presented as part of the 6th Kochi-Muziris Biennale in Kerala, South India. The work explores the transformation of Kochi from the ancient port of Muziris, a center of the spice trade and site of colonial exploitation, into a contemporary digital hub connected to the world through submarine internet cables. Kochi’s case highlights the continuities between colonial telegraph networks, trade routes, and today’s digital infrastructures, demonstrating that mechanisms of power shift in form but do not disappear.
The project is prompted by the recent retirement of SEA-ME-WE3, one of the world’s largest submarine cable systems, which had a landing point in Kochi. Its remains stay submerged as material traces of our digital present, where technological matter intersects with geological and archaeological strata.
The work approaches excavation both as a scientific practice and as a metaphor for uncovering invisible infrastructures, overlooked histories, and buried relations of power. Through the installation, the region’s history is reconfigured: materiality itself becomes a medium for narrating a shared temporality, where multiple histories intersect and coexist, opening a dialogue on the future of the digital age through the archaeological traces of the present.
Visual Reference, Deep sea, Deep time , Athina Koumparouli, 2025
The Kochi Biennale Foundation “For The Time Being“, the sixth edition of Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB), will feature 66 artists/collectives from over 20 countries, under the curatorial direction of Nikhil Chopra with HH Art Spaces, Goa. The exhibition, which is scheduled to open on December 12, 2025 and run through March 31, 2026, will unfold across multiple venues in Kochi, Kerala. KMB is the largest contemporary art biennale in South Asia, and the first of its kind in India.
This edition is oriented around the body, a bearer of memory and materiality, a site of encounter, and a witness to temporality. Within the curatorial framework, the body extends metaphorically into the landscape itself, to Kochi, a coastal port city built on movements of every kind—human and non-human—whose fragmented geography is stitched together by rivers, canals and backwaters, and its sediments borne by waves of colonial incursions, maritime trade, migrations, socio-political upheavals, and textures of its communal life.
The curatorial team notes, “Our invitation to companions was to work with Kochi’s climates, conditions, and resource realities; to make time, think nimbly, and collaborate locally. Around 50 new commissions are set across many first-time venues in neighbourhoods animated with trade, people, and movement. We draw from the past editions and their lives, and continue to see the exhibition as a growing organism constantly nourished by ideas, emotions, and actions. We also hold space for grief and mourning through this transformative time”.
Participating artists of the Sixth Edition of Kochi-Muziris Biennale
Abul Hisham, Aditya Puthur, Adrián Villar Rojas, Ali Akbar PN, Anja Ibsch and Grüntaler9, Arti Kadam, Athina Koumparouli, Bani Abidi and Anupama Kundoo, Bhasha Chakrabarti, Biraaj Dodiya, Birender Yadav, Cinthia Marcelle, Dhiraj Rabha, Dima Srouji and Piero Tomassoni, Dineo Seshee Bopape, Faiza Hasan, Gieve Patel, Gulam Mohammed Sheikh, Hicham Berrada, Himanshu Jamod, Hiwa K, Huma Mulji, Ibrahim Mahama, Jayashree Chakravarty, Jompet Kuswidananto, Jyoti Bhatt, Khageswar Rout, Kirtika Kain, Kulpreet Singh, Lakshmi Nivas Collective, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Lionel Wendt, Malu Joy (Sister Roswin CMC), Mandeep Raikhy, Maria Hassabi, Marina Abramović, Mark Prime, Matthew Krishnanu, Meenu James, Minam Apang, Mónica de Miranda, Monika Correa, Moonis Ahmad Shah, Naeem Mohaiemen, Nari Ward, Niroj Satpathy, Nityan Unnikrishnan, Otobong Nkanga, Pallavi Paul, Panjeri Artists’ Union, Prabhakar Kamble, Raja Boro, Ratna Gupta, Sabitha Kadannappally, Sandra Mujinga, Sayan Chanda, RB Shajith, Sheba Chhachhi and Janet Price, Shiraz Bayjoo, Smitha Babu, Sujith S.N, Tino Sehgal, Utsa Hazarika, Vinoja Tharmalingam, Yasmin Jahan Nupur, Zarina Mohammad.
Athina Koumparouli is a visual artist and art conservator based in Athens. Her work has been presented in group exhibitions in Greece and abroad, including: Elefsina 2023 – European Capital of Culture, Paxos Biennale 2024, In Memory of Memory (2023, Paris), This Current Between Us (2022, Athens), Outraged by Pleasure (2023, Athens), The Poem Returns as an Echo (2024, Athens), The Symbiocene Forest at BioArt Laboratories (2019, Eindhoven), Dutch Design Week (2019, Eindhoven). She has participated in artist residencies in Italy, the Netherlands, France, and Greece. In 2025, she presented her first solo exhibition at a.antonopoulou.art gallery in Athens. In December 2025, she will participate at the 6th Kochi-Muziris Biennale (Kerala, South India). She received the ARTWORKS fellowship by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation in 2022. In 2022 and 2023, in collaboration with the University of Ferrara and with the support of the Culture Moves Europe program, she developed an artistic project at an active excavation site on the Appian Way (Rome). Her artistic practice emerges through a multidisciplinary research approach focused on sites in transition—such as industrial sites, areas affected by natural disasters, or archaeological excavations. Often employing archaeological methodology as a tool of her artistic process, she explores issues related to different perceptions of the environment and aspects of the environmental crisis, through both present and speculative scenarios.