It was perhaps charcoal and coloured paper that brought together Aji V.N. and Juul Kraijer, a medium that both of them prefer, but their works couldn’t be more dissimilar. A slideshow of selected works by the artist couple from the Netherlands which was screened at the Lenin Balawadi at Vazhuthacaud on Sunday afternoon was a trip through the real and the surreal for the small crowd that gathered.
Juul’s work straddles the charcoal sketches from the 1990s through sculptures to her recent photographic work, which seemlike an extension of her drawings. All of these drawings depict a blending of the human form with the natural habitat or animals, with humans relegated to the background in most and the animals dominating.
Sketched out in blank backgrounds are a human forming out of a tree, lost among the leaves or another body partly emerging out of water with a batch of cranes taking a sip nearby. In another one, a man’s face is seen melting away into a flock of birds.
Interpretations of these images she leaves to the viewers, as she slides away from any need to explain with the words, ‘Let the pictures speak’.
More striking is her photographic work, using various reptiles from big snakes to poisonous scorpions. Evident in these images, the backgrounds of which are also blank, is the presence of a willing model and an expert reptile trainer.
In a series of photographs, a python is shown winding over the model’s face, constricting parts of it and revealing a glimpse of her expressionless eyes. In another, a group of boa constrictors are arranged so that it becomes a fashionable hairdo.
Compared to these images, Aji’s images are much closer to reality, in their recreations of his own impressions of places at a given time. Aji, who grew up in Thiruvananthapuram, and took his first steps into the world of art at the Government Fine Arts College here, shifted base to the Netherlands nearly two decades back.
One of the memorable images is a large landscape, which could be from anywhere in South India, on a 3metre x.75 metre canvas. The work, which is currently being exhibited at the Kochi Muziris Biennale, is something he made especially for viewing in these parts, as he was “interested in how people here react to it”.
The images all evoke memories of a bygone era, mainly due to the washed out shade of the coloured paper and the charcoal, which he says, “makes it look as if they were created from dust particles.”
