Kanai Kunhiraman: A Sculptor’s Story 1 Importance of Being Kanai Kunhiraman

(Kanai Kunhiraman and wife Nalini)

Ask any random person in Kerala about the painter that he knows. The answer would be invariably the expected one: Raja Ravi Varma. Upon prodding further he may utter a couple of other names depending on his home town in Kerala itself. Obviously, each village has its own poets, artists and mad men whom people tend to remember wherever they are. Rearticulate the question and replace the word painter with sculptor. Then the person may give a confused look in the beginning and soon you will see the only answer possible, for himself and for many, brightening up his face. The answer, again, is the expected one: Kanai Kunhiraman. He seems to have left an indelible impression in the minds of the people in Kerala with his monumental and impressive public sculptures. What about his reputation beyond the borders of Kerala?

(Kanai's work at the NGMA, New Delhi) 

Those artists who belong to his generation and also those who have spent some time with Kanai in his rare outing in other parts of the country might know him as an artist. One of his works, a horse like sculpture fashioned out of a moped scrap could be seen in the sculpture garden at the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi. But it has lost itself among other sculptures those are preserved at times and at other times seem abandoned.  The reason could be their provinciality not only of the aesthetics employed but also of the reputation of the names attached to those sculptors. Those artists who have got their due in the national art historical discourse find their pedestals within the royal halls of the Jaipur House where the NGMA is located. The other sculptures are left to weather under the open sky. Had Kanai Kunhiraman been recognized with some important national award he would have been inside the gallery and there would have been a retrospective by now.

(Raja Ravi Varma)

However, the criticism cannot be simply levelled at the authorities alone. Partly the reason for Kanai’s scant reputation elsewhere other than in Kerala (despite his initial fame as an internationally acclaimed and promising young sculptor from South India in late 1960s) lies with his own reluctance. Kanai somehow does not like to bask in the glory elsewhere. From the very beginning he has been happy with the cultural environment in Kerala, besides wading cleverly through the turbulent political waters of the state, mostly keeping his neck out and not only surviving but also doing extremely imposing sculptures in the public domain. His savvy nature in dealing with the political big wigs of different denominations perhaps made him complacent which he covers with his insistence on the natural environments that inspire his sculptures which he thinks wouldn’t be available elsewhere in the country.

(Reg Butler)

An artist who had gone to Britain to study sculpture under one of the famous artists and pedagogues, Reg Butler at the Slade School of Art and also had intimate familiarity with the giants like Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth shouldn’t have thought that a place in some corner of the world would be enough for an artist to do works and flourish. Perhaps, the same encounters might have made him think that remaining in one place did all the difference for both Moore and Hepworth had done most of their monumental public works in Britain itself. Whatever may be the case, once Kanai was back from London, he decided to stay in Kerala itself. He had gone for a very few sculptural symposiums elsewhere in Indian in the beginning but the huge opening and mileage that he had gained through his first monumental and path breaking sculpture, Yakshi, in the newly built dam site in Malampuzha, Palaghat District in north Kerala, in 1969, gave the sufficient impetus for his artistic self and ever since he has been doing sculptures through the length and breadth of Kerala, braving all the odds.

(Henry Moore)

Thinking of Kanai’s sojourn in public art so far (he is in his early eighties and going strong still), one comes to know that it was not a cake walk though no other sculptor could really make so much an impact as Kanai did not only in Kerala’s landscape but also in the psyche of the people there. Kanai rewrote the social and cultural mores of Kerala after waging a tough ideological and aesthetical fight with the orthodox and hypocritical society. It is a miraculous feat considering the number of works that he has done both in the public and private domain during a time when not enough state of private patronage was available in Kerala. However, there was an upward momentum among the cultural activists and benevolent patrons through rare, at that time as all of them were look for some indigenous expression in Kerala’s art against the larger backdrop of the modern Indian art.

(Barbara Hepworth)

As mentioned before, Kanai is not really a name to reckon with outside Kerala, a fact that so many diehard fans of Kanai love to dispute. They would say that it is not Kanai problem but the others’ inability to understand him. Sceptics would say that Kanai doesn’t have enough movable works to show in the galleries as he has devoted his time and energy in creating monumental public sculptures. Both may be true to an extent but the real problem lies in the systemic apathy, fueled by the artist’s own reluctance and complacency, in promoting Kanai beyond Kerala. Look for Kanai Kunhiraman in Youtube. You will find more that twenty videos featuring the artist, his works and his interviews, all in Malayalam. It is never an issue if someone chooses to speak in his mother tongue. But today we have the facilities to develop subtitles, using easy technologies. None seems to have bothered to do so. Hence, Kanai remains confined in a language shell. It is true that a work of art would speak for itself, and Kanai’s works do speak for themselves and at times for the artist too.

(Kanai's Nandi at Malampuzha) 

A google search would definitely yield a few articles about Kanai in English. Some academic journals also must be having studies written by scholars, all in English. But while the former materials talk the same stories told by the artist himself at various points (artists have the tendency to repeat the same story about their lives and works to different journalists and writers thinking that they all would make different stories about them but unfortunately all of them would repeat the same words of the artists), the latter are full of academic jargons and contortions that leave an interested reader disappointed. What is the solution to save Kanai from this conundrum that he himself also has partly contributed in building up? The solution is simple; make more literature on his art in various languages other than in Malayalam. As English is the link language for us in India, ideally that would be the first vehicle to redeem the limited reputation of a legendary sculptor like Kanai.

Kanai’s reluctance to participate in gallery based shows with his sculptural miniatures or sculptures created for disseminating through galleries is one of the reasons for his limited reputation elsewhere. He is also a painter but in paintings he has a different aesthetics which he had employed in some of his non-figurative sculptures and also a pictorial language long abandoned by his contemporaries. He is all the more happy to show his paintings but those who are impressed by his sculptures perhaps wouldn’t like to have the paintings as they find them less moving and persuasive like his sculptures. Kanai writes poems in Malayalam but they too are circulated within a niche audience that perhaps don’t have anything to do with the major poetry loving circles in Kerala. Caught between his ambition to be known also as a painter and poet, and his perennial identity as a sculptor, Kanai’s reputation needs to be salvaged as an artist who has been instrumental in changing the artistic mindscape in Kerala along with a few other artists other than Raja Ravi Varma.

(Kanai Kunhiraman)

I feel the need of Kanai’s story to be told to a larger audience that still thinks him as a new finding. It is not necessary that the greatness of an artist is understood during his life time. An artist’s worth is always revealed through the layers of time and the endurance of the aesthetical relevance of their works in the given societies, and their capacity to renew themselves, ideate and makes intellectual negotiations with the changing public perceptions. One may go up or down in reputation irrespective of the present status. However, some stories have to be told so that they would become the planks from which the others could dive deep into his creative life and know more. This series is intended to do that. Welcome to the series.

-          JohnyML