Of Shared History

An exhibition comprising works of five Kerala artists chronicles a crucial movement in art history.

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(From left) KP Krishnakumar’s untitled work; a work by NN Rimzon

NN Rimzon’s drawing Man in the Chalk Circle (1985), on display at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) in Noida, features a nude portrait of a man with a circular boundary drawn around him. Part of the exhibition “Pond Near the Field: Five Artists from Kerala”, curator Roobina Karode points out that the work portrays how his art projects the Dalit point of view. “He worked around the idea of untouchability, how the Dalit community was treated and had certain boundaries, as they were not allowed to enter big temples and were allotted smaller shrines. There is immense emphasis on boundaries in his drawings,” says Karode.

The exhibition comprises works of five artists, who spearheaded a radical group of leftist artists in Kerala. It brings together more than 225 works, including drawings, prints, collages and diaries by KP Krishnakumar, NN Rimzon, Surendran Nair, KM Madhusudhanan and CK Rajan. These artists were part of the first few batches who graduated from the College of Fine Arts, Trivandrum, established in 1975.

“Before the College of Fine Arts opened, there were no art colleges in Kerala. When we started out, there were hardly any teachers apart from the institute head and a library. We learned by reading magazines on British contemporary art,” says Rimzon. The state of Kerala witnessed much political unrest when the extremist Marxist-Leninist-Maoist faction turned into a crucial political force, under a Central government that had declared Emergency. Rimzon says, “We had a lot of hunger strikes by students, through which we got to know more about the political activities. As opposed to regular art students, who sat in studios and worked on canvases, we learnt from our intense political surroundings.”

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Many of Rimzon’s other series are quite similar to Devotee at the Pond, a charcoal on paper drawing, where a hut is surrounded by palm trees, with a pond nearby. “One of the ponds could be used by the Dalit community. All his works depict night, when the Dalits felt a sense of freedom, while the rest were asleep,” says Karode. She points out that these experiences draw a common thread with the alienated world of an artist, who “thinks, works and dreams differently”. The 58-year-old artist says, “The ponds and paddy fields in my works are used in an agricultural context, as most of the working class was associated with agriculture.”

Confident brush strokes in black ink mark Krishnakumar’s sketch stationed at the entrance to the exhibition, where a heavily built beast smiles while looking at the crescent moon in the sky. He sits on the trunk of a lone tree, bereft of leaves and bent down with his weight. The artist’s arresting set of sketches in the show are full of animals, beasts, human beings and machines in motion. Surendran Nair’s Self Portrait with Dragon Flies (1985) is an amalgamation of wit and humour. It captures the mood of the artist when bothered by a mosquito. The exhibition also includes diaries of some artists from the early 1990s, that provide
insights into their thought process and comprise rough sketches of important sculptural installations.

The exhibition is on till March 30 at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Sector 126, Noida

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