In 2016, Israeli artist Meydad Eliyahu, who traces his ancestry to the Jew Town in Mattancherry, brought on a personal ‘box of documents’ to a collateral show held in a gallery alongside the Kochi Muziris Biennale.
It contained a painstaking collection of pictures, part of the personal memorabilia of his forebears from Kochi which painted the community’s hyphenated, split identity. Mr. Eliyahu is back in the anachronistically named Jew Town now, his box being emptied into the streets in an effort to stitch up a lost cultural heritage, which is his while being part of the mosaic that West Kochi has been.
His partner in the mission is Jewish calligrapher Thoufeek Zakriya, a Muslim from the area who works as a chef in Dubai. The public art work, Red Crown, Green Parrot , is a biennale collateral curated by Tanya Abraham.
“There’s a huge gap between 1949, when Jews began to migrate en masse to Israel, and now, with a good part of their heritage simply eroding away from our collective consciousness. Therefore, we decided to marshal it from the gallery space into the streets where it once perched,” says Ms. Abraham.
The ‘Malabari’ stretch of the old Jew Town will have its walls painted by Ms. Eliyahu with a calligraphic rendering of the unique songs and tales of the Kochi Jews by Mr. Zakriya, adding to the narrative. “It is sensitive, considering that I’m an Israeli Jew and he’s a Muslim working in the Middle East, but what we are trying is a cultural dialogue and not exactly a religious one. If the culture is dying today, that’s because people are closed for a dialogue,” says Mr. Eliyahu. The duo has already begun their work on an abandoned wall at Marakkadavu Junction.
For Mr. Zakriya, recognised as an expert in Jewish culture in these parts, it is an effort to give currency to a culture and the traditions it spawned. “The parrot, reminiscent of the raconteur parrot of Ezhuthachan, the father of Malayalam language, also alludes to collective migration. The red crown is in reference to the majestic position the community once enjoyed in society,” he says.
The handbook in the possession of the oldest of the Jews in the town, Sarah Cohen, and Karkuzhali , a book of folk songs of the Kochi Jews compiled by Ophira Gamliel and Scaria Zacharias, are being used for reference in the project.
The public project will be officially under way from December 13 through the biennale. The team plans to have an artists-guided tour of the project sites at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. daily.
