Kerala Art Exhibition Explores Hope And Despair In Post-Covid World

Locked up in a Kerala village for nearly a month due to the pandemic, one morning I saw myself in the mirror and was shocked. Strands of my hair were all over the floor. I felt terrible. Imagine my surprise a few days later when I saw a work of art created from strands of the artist바카라�s hair. I was at the 바카라�Lokame Tharavadu바카라� (World Is One Family) contemporary art exhibition in Alappuzha바카라�my first outing after lockdown restrictions were relaxed. Who would have thought of one바카라�s hair as material for  an artwork of such size and scale to depict despair and longings, if not due to the pandemic-induced loneliness?

The pandemic locked up human bodies across the world, but it also opened up their minds and ­emotions in many ways. The Bangalore-based Malayalee artist Indu Antony says the pandemic and the lockdown threw her into unchartered territories. The isolation was particularly heightened as she had been living alone. 바카라�The absence of touch was striking,바카라� she says. Then she discovered her old 바카라�orma petti바카라� (memory box), which contained objects she had been collecting for years.

바카라�I began stitching each of these objects with a single strand of my own hair because, for me, hair and the act of sewing is a metaphor for memory,바카라� Indu says. Memory is an act of resistance against forgetfulness. Indu had felt a sense of resonance with abandoned photographs. She has been collecting images of women from various spaces바카라�some found on the road and some from old shops. She used them on salt prints and stitched their edges with her hair. 바카라�Salt prints have an ephemeral quality to them. They fade, they disappear in front of your eyes바카라�much like abandoned people. I wanted to hold on to their presence by stitching the edges of the photograph with my hair, which eventually will be the only part of this work that will remain, with the empty space to question this,바카라� she says.

Such photographs of women are now all over the walls of her home. 바카라�It바카라�s like these women and I are in the house, like an extended family. By the end of the year or early next year, the image will completely disappear and only the hair around it will ­remain,바카라� Indu says. She has also woven a poem using her hair. 바카라�Stitching gave me a kind of meditative feel,바카라� she says.

바카라�Lokame Tharavadu바카라�, perhaps the largest ever contemporary art exhibition in the country, has many such stories to tell. Indu바카라�s memory box is only one among a large number of astonishing pieces of work on display. Over 270 artists, more than 50 of whom are women, are exhibiting their work바카라�paintings, photographs, sculptures, installations, documentaries etc바카라�in the 70-day show at six venues바카라�five in Alappuzha and one in Ernakulam. 바카라�The exhibition is conducted in a space spread over 6 lakh sq ft. The wall space ­itself is 1.5 lakh sq ft,바카라� says artist Bose Krishnamachari, founder member and president of Kochi Biennale Foundation. 바카라�Lokame Tharavadu바카라� is Bose바카라�s brainchild.

How Bose brought such a large number of artists on a single platform is a story in itself. All the artists are Malayalees, but based in various cities and countries. Some are famous like Gigi Scaria, Parvathi Nair, Jalaja P.S. and Jitish Kallat, but several others are relatively unknown. According to Bose, restricting the selection of artists only to Malayalees hasn바카라�t really restricted the scope of the exhibition. 바카라�It has rather opened up a new horizon,바카라� he says. Bose travelled to the nooks and corners of the state to find the artists. Some of them didn바카라�t even have a studio. He found one of them painting on her kitchen table and another keeping his artwork on his bed. But Bose gave them confidence. He set no bar바카라�age, gender, ­successful or struggling바카라�for selecting an artist.

바카라�A true artist can be identified by his or her consistency and continued practice,바카라� Bose says. The process helped him find talents with diversity in schools of practices and philosophies ranging from surrealism to abstract and conceptual art.

It all began when the Kochi Biennale couldn바카라�t take off due to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Bose then conceived the idea of 바카라�Lokame Tharavadu바카라�. Kerala바카라�s then finance minister Thomas Issac suggested Alappuzha as the venue. Bose also happened to meet the head architect of the Alappuzha heritage project, Benny Kuriakose, at the Thiruvananthapuram airport. It was then decided to convert the heritage properties in Alappuzha, which were in dilapidated condition, into temporary spaces for the art exhibition with the help of Bose바카라�s designer and architect friends.

Bose invited his artists to see the venue even ­before the project kicked off. One of the artists participating in the exhibition, Blodsow V.S., showed us one such venue at the Coir Corporation building where coir and weaving machines were lying scattered all over. The organisers converted it into a beautiful space, though not climate-­controlled. 바카라�Finance was the biggest challenge. The government offered Rs 2 crore,바카라� says Bose. So far at the show, the artists have sold their artwork for Rs 22,000 to Rs 28 lakh.

Self-reflection and rethinking during the pandemic have left a deep impact on most of the artwork here. All the themes바카라�ranging from gender to caste, nature to disasters and so on바카라�have a common element that lies somewhere between despair and hope, which resonates with emotions triggered by the pandemic.

Despair and hope loom large not just on the ­artwork at the show, but on the entire surroundings바카라�in fact, on the lives of people. The show itself was affected by the pandemic as it had to be suspended only 12 days after it opened on April 18. It was resumed on August 21 after the state government relaxed lockdown restrictions.

Alappuzha, known as the Venice of East, is a tourism hub in Kerala. Tourism was hit hard everywhere due to the Covid-19 pandemic and Alappuzha is one of the worst hit as a large section of people here are directly dependent on tourism. On the way to the show, we could see a long line of houseboats waiting for tourists바카라�with despair and hope. Outside the show바카라�s venue, 52-year-old Kalpana Kumari, who runs a small shop, tells us she earned nothing during the first and second waves of the pandemic. Even now her sales are merely 20 per cent of what used to be in the pre-pandemic time.

At the show, art becomes inseparable from the reality around. You can see artist Vipin Dhanurdharan바카라�s installation of a railway track named 바카라�Rest In Peace,바카라� which is a sharp reminder of the death of 16 migrant workers who were run over by a train in Maharashtra바카라�s Karmad while ­returning home during the first wave of Covid-19. Another artist has a fully naked portrait of himself that he painted during his quarantine period. Someone else depicts human faces on his utensils, again a quarantine experience.

There is also a deep sense of journey through history. A film about Mulakkaram (tax imposed by Kingdom of Travancore on underprivileged-caste women if they covered their breasts in public) runs in one of the many small theatres set up at the venue. Names of Unniyarcha, Thathrikkutti and other heroic women engraved on the surface of an artwork are hard to miss.

바카라�Lokame Tharavadu바카라� is a line from a poem by the Malayalam poet Vallathol Narayana Menon. Tharavadu means ancestral home, which used to accommodate joint families. Among the exhibits is a photograph of one such tharavadu, slit down the middle by a concrete cutter after the division of property. A paradox, indeed. But the show off­ers nothing less than liberating our minds.

(This appeared in the print edition as "Unlocking the Memory Box")