David Hall at Kochi Biennale: A Kenyan Artist, a Child Bride's Daughter, and 330 Years of Walls That Listen

If I could travel back in time, I would build a shelter for my mother and help her run away. That's Tal Sasum, a student from Arunachal Pradesh, describing an artwork made of fabric, cardboard, and watercolour. In the next room, a Kenyan artist has drawn anonymous human figures directly onto the 330-year-old walls of a Dutch colonial building. One show is about a girl who was never given a choice. The other is about bodies that never stop moving. Both are at David Hall.

Two shows. One Dutch bungalow. Three hundred and thirty years of walls.

David Hall sits on the north side of the Parade Ground in Fort Kochi. Built in 1695 by the Dutch East India Company, it was once the residence of Hendrik Adriaan van Rheede tot Drakenstein - the Dutch commander who compiled the Hortus Malabaricus, a 12-volume study of Kerala's plants. Later, it was home to David Koder, a Jewish businessman who gave the building its name.

Today, it's an art gallery and cafe. During the Biennale, it becomes one of the most intimate exhibition spaces in Fort Kochi - three rooms, thick white walls, and a quiet garden. This edition, it holds two shows that couldn't be more different in form but land in the same emotional territory: what do bodies carry? What do they remember?

Scree - Peterson Kamwathi / Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute

The main exhibition at David Hall is Scree, presented by the Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute (NCAI) as part of the Biennale's Invitations programme.

The artist is Peterson Kamwathi, born in 1980 in Nairobi. He draws human figures. That's the simple version. The complicated version is that his figures carry entire histories inside them - migration, protest, prayer, queuing, waiting.

At David Hall, Kamwathi has drawn directly onto the building's walls using charcoal and pastel. The figures are anonymous - you can't tell where they're from, what they believe, or what language they speak. They stand, sit, gather, rest. They look like they could be in a queue at a ration shop, or at an airport, or outside a polling booth. That ambiguity is the point.

On the floor, you'll find sculptural assemblages made from materials Kamwathi collected in Kochi itself - old gunny sacks, synthetic textiles, repurposed billboard vinyls. These are the leftovers of trade: things that once held, transported, or advertised goods, now folded and stacked like monuments to commercial life. They sit between use and obsolescence.

Here's the connection that makes this show work at this specific venue. David Hall is a Dutch colonial building in a port city. Kamwathi is from Nairobi, on the East African coast. The Swahili coast and Kerala's coast have been trading partners for centuries - the same ocean, the same monsoon winds, the same movement of goods and people. Kamwathi draws on that shared history. His figures on these walls are not visitors. They belong here as much as the walls themselves do. He uses charcoal, pastel, watercolour, stencils, and collage - never digital, always by hand.

Forest Shelter - Tal Sasum

Also at David Hall, you'll find Forest Shelter by Tal Sasum, a student artist from Rajiv Gandhi University in Arunachal Pradesh.

This one is quieter. And it hits harder.

The artist statement says it plainly. Nyeme kabnam - the rhythm of marriage, loss, and longing echoed through the women in her family. Her mother was married as a child. Her aunt too. Tal didn't just hear their stories. She lived inside the atmosphere they created.

The installation grows from what Tal describes as an impossible childhood wish: if she could go back in time, she would build a shelter for her mother and help her run away. A place so safe, so hidden, that her mother could choose her own life. Even if changing her mother's fate meant Tal herself might never exist.

That's the emotional paradox at the heart of this work. To save the person you love most, you'd have to erase yourself.

Forest Shelter uses fabric, video, cardboards, thread, natural pigment, watercolour paper, and acrylic colour to create what Tal calls an "imagined refuge" - part painting, part interactive passage, part emotional architecture. It asks what choice, protection, or escape could mean for a girl who was never offered any.

Visiting Details

Venue: David Hall Gallery, Fort Kochi Location: North side of Parade Ground, Fort Kochi Programme: Scree is part of Invitations, Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2025-26 Dates: December 12, 2025 - March 31, 2026 Cafe: Pandal Cafe inside - good coffee, good breakfast

David Hall is one of the key Kochi-Muziris Biennale venues and sits right opposite the Parade Ground. If you're walking from Aspinwall House, it's about 10 minutes south.

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