: Artist Riyas Komu pulled out of the much-hyped Vadodara Festival early this year after the organisers declined to accommodate his project, Stoned Goddesses — the artist’s attempt at archiving the columns of darkness in India’s chequered history.
His work featuring nine incidents of violence beginning with the riots following Partition and ending with Godhra riots in 2002 — will now be on show for a month at the Kashi Art Gallery on Burgher Street in Fort Kochi from May 1.
Done using stone lithography, made famous by iconic painter Raja Ravi Varma, the explicitly political series knits together the dark periods that shaped the country’s destiny.
The stones, kept inside glass tables as if in a museum, have inscriptions such ‘Partition Riots’, ‘Gandhi/Godse’, ‘1969’, ‘The Emergency’, The Anti-Sikh Riots’,‘Bombay Blasts’, ‘Poverty Pokhran’ and ‘Godhra/Modi’, the last capturing “the rise of Narendra Modi as the Hindutva Mascot”.
The show as such is titled, ‘On International Workers’ Day, Gandhi from Kochi’ which revisits Gandhian principles like satya, swaraj and ahimsa pitting them against perception, violence, victim, fear and control in five paintings.
The artist has also changed the floor of the gallery with terracotta tiles, which will act as a platform from which to think about the intricacies of the works.
“The exhibition is a conscious attempt to get back to my art practice,” Mr. Komu told The Hindu. “Which other place Kerala to juxtapose Gandhian philosophy, the man’s inclusive character, with Marxist ideology?” he asked.
The exhibition, which opens at 7 p.m. on the May Day, will be preceded by a discussion on ‘Gandhi Now’ at David Hall in Fort Kochi. The exhibition will be under way till May 31.
