Beyond The Binaries

The Bihar Museum Biennale at NGMA Bengaluru was a gentle reminder on the need to re-imagine gender, inclusivity and museums in a digital world

- Swati Shikha and Anisha Reddy

HOW does Artificial Intelligence (AI) understand and interpret gender? That was the question on artist Karthik Kalyanaraman’s mind when he collaborated with his brother and AI to embark on an interpersonal journey to create “Strange Genders”. The human conception of gender identities more than often flows in the conventional representation of the male-female binary. AI, however, invisibilises the binaries. Speaking at a discussion about museums in the run-up to the second edition of the Bihar Museum Biennale, Kalyanaraman said, “When AI draws a human figure, there is only a certain percentage of a boy or girl in that image. The ‘strange gender’ in our art thus refers to the male and female.”

Be it in gender or in the art and intellectual world, the idea of fighting the binary permeated through the discussions, which was anchored by Outlook in collaboration with the Bihar Museum and held at the NGMA Bengaluru on July 8. The Bihar Biennale attempted to envisage museums beyond binaries, creating a space for not just museums made of brick and mortar, but also accommodated the museums we carry within us in the form of memories and experiences irrespective of our identities. And the discussions lent a small preview into what can be expected from the museums of the future.

The idea of a museum biennale was meant to challenge the definition of museums and museum management while transforming the intimidating stillness of these vast spaces into a volley of voices, and to enable a dialogue with the living museums within us. The larger objective was to act as a catalyst for decentralising power hierarchies and binaries. With two invigorating panels, moderated by