The artist is working hard, as he portrays social inequalities and injustice in his latest solo show
The artist is working hard, as he portrays social inequalities and injustice in his latest solo show
A headless man walks confidently against the colors of the Indian flag. This 2002 work is called ‘progress’. ‘Hunting’, a 4×6 ft oil on canvas in 2014, is about horrific incidents of lynchings due to cow slaughter. An acrylic ‘pandemic’ on canvas, deals with the disease that brought the world to a halt two years ago.
“Oasis” seems, at first glance, a conspicuous place for beauty and serenity, but a closer look reveals that, in the words of W.B. Yeats, “a terrifying beauty is born”. The canvas shows a shrunken manicured space filled with flowers; Elephant ears turn into butterfly wings, buildings spin in the sky and a dry earth holds a restless world.
Nimom Pushparaj’s ongoing solo show ‘Dystopia’ at Durbar Hall Art Gallery has these works and more. Artist, filmmaker and writer, the former president of Kerala Lalitakala Akademi is known for presenting social inequality, injustice and discrimination through his works. In the show, he also addresses the invasion of technology into our lives and the resulting dystopia from an increasingly wired world.
Surrealism and psychology have been recurring leitmotifs in his works from the very beginning, and he uses them cleverly in current shows as well. In ‘Dystopia’ (mixed media, 2022), the formidable Salvador Dalí shares space with mythical figures on a chess board. This points to a game where there is no winner. Dali and his watch have been a recurring image in the artist’s art. Krishna is missing in the ‘Shepherd Series’ (2022), where his flute is thrown and a figure’s legs hang from the top of a time machine. The cows associated with Krishna search for the lost god. Other repeated images are the weighing scale symbolizing the judiciary, books and pens for education, and the chair as the seat of political power.
Pushparaj uses strong colors, bold lines and large figures. There are no gray areas, only metaphors that tell apart, and so his craft makes little use of shading and layering.
An alumnus of the College of Fine Arts (1985) Thiruvananthapuram, Pushparaj is an internationally acclaimed artist. He has written three books, directed three feature films and has been the art director for over 70 films in different languages. As president of the Kerala Lalitakala Academy during the pandemic, he reached out to help the artist community, which was affected by the sudden closure of galleries, exhibitions and a source of livelihood. Many works on the show were done during the pandemic. The show will conclude on August 20.