(Janaky Sunil)
Captivity triggers creativity. Picasso once said, if they
put him behind bars and prevented him from painting by depriving all kinds of
mediums, he would lick the walls of the jail and make drawings out of his
saliva. Some people know that they are gifted with the ability to sing, draw,
paint, write poetry and even dance only when they find themselves in forced
confinement. Best pieces of literature and history have taken birth in custody.
On the one hand it gives enough space, time and tranquility to the writer to
indulge in the art of writing and on the other hand, creativity of any kind
takes material shape as a part of the effort to transcend the forced boundaries.
Then it becomes a realization and rebellion at once. Realization it is but the
rebellious side of it is noticed perhaps by the others only if the works
created in captivity get a chance to see the light of the day.
(Works by Janaky Sunil)
Janaky Sunil, a PhD scholar in Physics in an eminent
institute in Bangaluru was at her home during the first phase of Covid lockdown
in March, April and May 2020. Like everyone else, she too thought the days of
confinement would be over sooner than later. She kept her educational routine
unaffected and was secretly happy to have an extended holiday with her parents
and brother who too had come back from Delhi where he pursued his graduate
studies in History. Initial enthusiasm for holidays gave way to boredom and
Janaki felt like doing something else than watching television, reading, experimenting
with exotic recipes and chatting up with friends and parents in virtual and
real space. It was when Janaky found a hidden talent in her; painting. Then it
was an unexpected affair with lines, colors, ink, papers and whatnot.
(Works by Janaky Sunil)
The paintings were growing in number and it was difficult to
contain them inside the files and Janaky’s secret affair was about to be found
out by her parents. It was a great surprise for her mother, Meena, who writes
poems occasionally and sees them printed in magazines too. For her father,
Sunil, whose identity I withhold for the time being, it came as a pleasant
shock because in his busy schedule he had never noticed her artistic
inclinations though he knew that she liked photography. For him the children
getting attracted to academic pursuits in different areas of knowledge was a
thing of pride though he did not particularly want them to follow his footsteps
as a public intellectual, unparalleled orator and unrivalled Marxian scholar in
Kerala, and an eminent professor of Malayalam literature. Well, now you have
guessed his identity. Yes, Janaky’s dad is none other than Sunil P Ilayidom.
(Janaky Sunil, Meena, Sunil P Ilayidom and Madhavan Sunil and Janaky's works)
It wasn’t surprising for Janaki when her dotting parents,
upon the relaxation of lockdown, went in search of drawing and painting
materials and brought home all she wanted; papers, colors and brushes. Janaky’s
paintings show a naïve style which is not deliberate. Considering her mature approach
in the other academic field, the paintings are definitely naïve and childlike
for it is the ‘withheld language’ of expression that she employs in her works
and without the honing of it through formal fine art studies and practice.
Sitting in confinement, all what she recollects are the images that had gone
into her mind and heart during her growing up years. She has also painted
images from her immediate past and present; in one of them she is seen sitting
at a library and in another work, one could see a skyline that she has gathered
in her memory during her travels in the metro cities.
(Janaky's works)
When the floodgates of memories are opened, the cascading
images need a capturing medium which is the artistic language of Janaky. Though
she had made some pictures and drawings during her early school days just like
any other children of her age at that time, she had lost track of such visual
language. So what one sees in her painterly expressions are the ‘recovering’ of
an ancient language which once had currency in the private world of her
childhood and perhaps does not have a transactional value in the present
aesthetic economy. However, such a point of view does not discard or displace
the relevance and the intrinsic value of her aesthetics which is absolutely
truthful and deep, mainly because it comes out from a ‘lived’ and ‘living’
autobiographical narrative put into a ‘restored’ language. Janaky’s finding of
her creative self as a visual artist in that sense has more complex layers than
we expected to find in the apparent naïve style. For unravelling such
complexities we need a body of work from Janaki done without the sense of
confinement or lockdown in her. The evolution of language in both the phases,
however minute it may be, could reveal the nuances of her works and the source
of their origin than treating them as a hobby or distraction picked up during
the days of lockdown. Let’s wait and see whether Janaky would go into making
more paintings or not.
(Bhuvan Abraham Modayil)
Vinu Abraham, the famous writer of novels, short stories and
film scripts stands at par with Sunil P Ilayidom when it comes to the chance
finding of visual creativity in his progeny during the days of lockdown.
An outgoing type of person who spends a lot of time in listening to western
contemporary music and thinks of becoming a music producer and arranger, Bhuvan
Abraham Modayil suddenly found himself with brush and paint, confronting a
wall. He kept aside his favorite sports such as football and badminton for a few days and kept working on the wall. A Commerce Graduate by education, by expectation Bhuvan must be painting
some super flat image of a pop singer of his choice with bursting energy and
inaudible sound. Instead he went into the making of an image that brought out a
tender symbolic side in him, which again is filled with a primitive symbolism
as we see in the Australian Aboriginal painters and the Gond Painters in India.
(Mural by Bbuvan Abraham Modayil)
Bhuvan also used to paint as a child. When he grew up, he
left it along the way and picked up all the other traits that would define him
as a young man, definitely unlike his father, who spends many hours in a
restaurant in Trivandrum, either reading or imagining scenarios for his
forthcoming film or short story or novel, over many cups of tea. Vinu Abraham
likes paintings but never tried his hand at one. Nor has he goaded his son to
pick up brush to become a painter though his son becoming a painter would have definitely
made him proud. But like a modern father, Vinu let Bhuvan have his way and was
surprised to see the artist in him manifesting as a mural painter rather than a
painter in a notepad or canvas. Bhuvan's mother Suja, an award winning documentary film maker made his life much easier as she created a conducive environment for the artist to flourish. The painting has some meaning for the young
man. And obviously the onlooker also should see it.
(Details of Bhuvan's work)
Through the aboriginal design and patterns, a cat
masquerading as tiger or a tiger masquerading as a cat comes out with red eyes
extending out of the contours of the face and a pair of ears jutting out of the
top of the head. The curvy repetitive and colorful patterns give identifiable
shapes to the frontal body of the beast whose head has an ornamental pattern
that resembles a neo-tantric painting of Biren De. Also it has a pink pattern
coming out of the head like a protruding crown. The tribal primitivism (that
had come out of the erasure drawings of Rabindranath Tagore too) in a visual
art sense has made the artist subconsciously turn the body of the tiger into a
field (one could see that in Gond and Worli paintings) where a fantasy
landscape is carefully painted. Bhuvan places the whole visual scenario against
a black backdrop that generally in the primitive art practices manifest the
unfathomable universe.
(Vinu Abraham)
Forced confinement takes people to their origins. They
travel through their genetic ladders and reach to the places that otherwise
they never thought existed. The Covid lockdown has made people creative and
imaginative. The lack of sociality and the unresolved predicament of lockdown
have made people innovate mediums and modes to reach out to the people not only
in their vicinity but also them around the world. Some act, some sing, some
write poems and a need for books in that sense has also increased. This is the
new normal in creativity. One does not need a formal training to be an artist.
Nor does one need a gallery to exhibit. He/she may be painting secretly, but it
would definitely reach other places through new modes of communication. Like
Janaki and Bhuvan there must be so many young people painting while in
confinement, expressing their hitherto unknown fears, passions, desires,
anxieties and hopes.
-JohnyML
(Sunil P Ilayidom and Vinu Abraham are two eminent
personalities in the contemporary cultural scenario. They are my personal
friends, a fact that gives me added pleasure to write about the creativity of
their children. There must be so many young children in the world who have
found out their artistic self while in confinement. I wish them all the best
and hope to see those works at some point of time though that is too ambitious
a thing to ask for.)
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