Avinash Veeraraghavan is at an interesting crossroads of his artistic career. In his 20-year-long career when we have become used to the autobiographical nature of his art, Avinash is looking at the external world to step into a new phase. It is just a co-incidence that the Bengaluru-based artist is participating in the upcoming Kochi Muziris Biennale (KMB) for the first time.
Two 60 by 40 embroidery works with a wallpaper forming the backdrop at one of the spaces in David Hall, where his pieces will be on display. Would we get a glimpse of the transformation?
“Maybe. My embroidery work deals with the structural part of my work but since it is time consuming and labour-intensive, I don’t do it often. I work with a friend who has an embroidery factory in Bombay. But Sudarshan (Sudarshan Shetty, curator of the third edition of KMB) is fond of my embroidery works.” Avinash is the first artist from Bengaluru whose name has come up in the list of 25 artists rolled out by KMB last week. Describing it as a very significant space for any contemporary Indian artist, Avinash says it is different from showing in a gallery. “It is more open and more public. I feel privileged,” expresses Avinash seated in his cosy studio in Cooke Town. Given the quiet ambience of Cooke Town, it is not surprising that it is home to artists such as Ayisha Abraham, Mariam Suhail, Krishnaraj Chonat, Kiran Subbaiah and Anup Mathew Thomas.
Born in Tamil Nadu, Avinash lived in Mumbai for a short period before he made Bengaluru his permanent home. He Avinash started off as a designer. He had a rather informal education in design and art under twin Italian brothers Andrea and Luigi Anastasio and even ran a design firm called Beetroot from 1998-2001.
“For me design and art are not distant. Design is just more technical form of art. Design has a frame of reference and function is an important aspect of it but there is an incredible world of graphic design out there,” says the artist putting the graphic nature of his digital prints, multi-channel video installations into perspective.
That his shift to art was a natural progression was demonstrated right from his first exhibition “Portraits: All prints 6 by 4” held in 2001 at Sakshi Gallery on St. Marks Road (Sakshi Gallery has now moved to Mumbai).
A keen photographer, he had thousands of images in his collection and for the show, he created a wallpaper of these photographs and invited the viewers to replace the displayed photographs with their own. Very Candidly Avinash admits that while as an idea it worked, it failed on the ground.
Since then Avinash has pulled off eight solos, around 20 group shows, a public art project in Denmark, Illy Sustain Art Prize at Arco, Madrid, and “I Love My India: Stories for a city” by Tara Publishing.
Anything close to his heart? Nothing, he says, not even his well-known exhibitions like “Toy Story” and “Everyone has dreams”! “I not just get detached from a work, I suddenly have this aversion. But one work I feel that has outlived all other works of mine is the book. It was a mish-mash of culture drawn from different cities and represented through billboards, architecture etc,” recalls the artist, Avinash who is now working on a set of short story book, each comprising 20-24 pages.
He Avinash is also gearing up for a solo show at GallerySKE in December which may mark the onset of the second phase in his career. “I have spent such a long time being introspective. But now I feel I have reached the end of it and I am struggling to engage with a new world which is outside. My work has always been more digital and now my desire is to engage with a real world. I don’t know what will come out. It is as frightening as it is liberating.”
