From birth, the human mind seeks to infuse life into objects: playing with dolls, wanting toy carts to roll and kites to fly. And so, when V.Anamika tells me that her work ‘More than I’ is about spending time with the painting, to expand our experience, I should not be surprised. ‘More than I’ is a glittering canvas of hundreds of tiny 12 mm diameter circles, die-cut from magazines and coloured papers, carefully pasted on board. A thin gold film is stretched over, questioning our tendency to value gold more than paper. “It was a tedious and difficult process, yet, it was like Vipasana, a silent continual meditation. Over time, I become a witness of the drawing.” From Chennai, Anamika and seven others — N. Ramachandran, Saravanan Parasuraman, Kumaresan Selvaraj, Yuvan Bodhisathuvar, Vijay Pichumani and R.Janarthanan are part of a show in Dubai this summer. A joint effort by independent curator Mukta Ahluwalia Bedi with Art*ry Dubai to represent artists from Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, Southern Sojourn is on till June 13. The show reflects Ahluwalia’s interest in vernacular expression and how contemporary issues influence the artist’s approach, strong in line drawing and ornamentation.
It was a common artist and friend, Santhanam, who introduced Ahluwalia to young and emerging artists in Chennai. Says Anamika, “She did not just ask us to send images – she came down and met the artists.” Once the selection was made, the group started to prepare for the show. Most had at least one work-in-progress. N.Ramachandran, detailed and meticulous in approach, sent his installation with 98 doors in which the viewer gets peeks into varied insights. Keeping to his criterion, no one photographic view can capture his work ‘@’ and even the colour range goes beyond the digital gamut. Ramachandran is looking for something indefinable, an alchemical quality that goes beyond materiality, like the sheen of a peacock’s feather. He says, “I cannot say if the work is contemporary, but it is like a mirror reflecting the thing presently in front of you.”
Philosophical and meditative engagements of these kinds enter the works of several others. “I work alone, concentrating deep in my work,” says Yuvan Bodhisathuvar. He was fascinated with the random patterns that were formed on cutting boards and acrylic sheets he used for cutting paper. Likewise, layers of glue slathered on a board made an impression. These were all formed by his engagement, as if the materials and he had a conversation. “There are secrets between me and my work, and the work knows about me,” says Yuvan, who went on to make prints of all three impressions. For Southern Sojourn, Yuvan made a series of topographies creating illusions with lines, making a flat surface appear convoluted. These relate to life’s contrasts – bitter and sweet, high and low, black and white – also illusory.
Using kum-kum, manjal and vibhuti, Kumaresan Selvaraj brings the concept of alangaram to the canvas. “Worship can take many different forms — for me, it is about making something beautiful.” Like starbursts in some far off galaxy, his canvases are like instantaneous moments that appear after aeons of process.
Ahluwalia’s collection directs our gaze to common trends amongst this group and one is curious to see what sets them apart. While they stubbornly resist categorisation, often their works are very constructed, almost architectural in approach. Many of them are engaged with the repositioning of found objects and elements, situating it in a renewed context. In both free form and the more ordered artworks, the graphic perception dominates, treading a line between art and design. The strength of line work, a forte of the South, persists, renewed through the wide repertoire of media now available. A kinship with the landscape through textures and patterns is brought to graphic explorations as in ‘Manuscript’, where Saravanan brings the line to play out a childhood fascination for a bush plant. There is an engagement with memories of sensations related to things of the South, from the traditional vibhuti to imported copies of LIFE magazine. “There is an intimacy with the work. We love to do things ourselves,” says Ramachandran. The artists vigorously animate their canvas with intelligent awareness as in Yuvan’s ‘I knew Yuvan’.
