At home with creativity

Chennai-based artist Parvathi Nayar, who showcased her series The Fluidity of Horizons at the recently concluded Kochi-Muziris Biennale at the Aspinwall House, Kochi, says that her work is a reflection of a journey. Parvathi, who closely works with the dynamics of spaces, points out that the location has been central to her collection for the Biennale. “I like to play with scale. For instance, the largest drawing is 6x15 ft and the smallest one is just a few inches. So, it is all about playing with space, which draws in the viewer and makes them, react in a certain way. When something is really small, you respond to it in a certain way – you take a step backwards,” she explains.

This journey, says Parvathi, is one that is both personal and that also resonates with the history of Kerala’s reception to outsiders. “I walked around different sites and since I am originally from Kochi, my family home is there. There are people who say that my ancestors (whom I don’t know and who will probably be lost in the mists of history) came from another part of Kerala in search of a job with the East India Company. I re-read Kerala history and was struck by how, though Kerala has welcomed these people, it wasn’t a benign welcome. It was a bloody conflict. There was a lot of violence and it wasn’t a smooth sailing.

The complexity has been left out of history. But something good has come out of this confrontation of different cultures. I thought I would like to talk about these things in the work,” she adds. Parvathi Nayar’s uniquely hybrid work brings together elements of draughtsmanship, video, photography, sculpture and painting, and explores the interactions in our socio-cultural milieus. The panels are painstakingly dotted to form a unique colour palette.

Says Parvathi, “My work explores spatial relationships: both the internal/intimate spaces within our bodies, and the external/public in which we live. The artworks are sites of dialogue where different elements – the scientific and the intuitive, the historical and the contemporary – meet and converse, while encouraging viewers to re-experience once-familiar perspectives.”

For Parvathi, working with contemporary artist and curator of the Biennale, Jitish Kallat has been yet another highlight. “A Biennale is all about pushing the art to a new place; to push it as far as it would go, at the moment. And, Jitish has ensured that, with his curatorial note that I responded so well to. He has the micro as well as macro view and that resonated with what I had in mind for the work. Working with him was immensely rewarding and he is at the helm of a Biennale that would be putting Indian contemporary art on the global map in the right way. It is a one-of-a-kind event and it will do a lot for Kochi. It reinvigorates Kochi as a cultural capital,” she concludes.