At the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Nari Ward’s Divine Smiles (2025) is an exercise in imagination, asking people to “preserve” their smiles inside small cans for posterity. The cans, once imbued with a person’s smile, are then closed and installed at Anand Warehouse in a large spherical sculpture. Each day throughout the biennale, the sphere will grow more luminous, refracting light off the mylar lids across the room, as more smiles are added.
Part of Ward’s Canned Smile Projects series started in 2013, Divine Smiles is driven by community engagement; in the Kochi iteration, Ward works with local can manufacturers, mylar sellers, label printers, and a group of workers who assemble the elements of the can.
A pushcart, borrowing from the hand-painted aesthetics of local street signs, travels the streets and markets around Fort Kochi during the day to collect smiles, and is parked in the exhibition space in the evening. After the Biennale the cans will be sold, with Ward investing the proceeds back into the community.
The sixth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale is curated by Nikhil Chopra with HH Art Spaces, an artist-led organisation based in Goa.
