Art and medicos

In the visitors’ book placed at the entrance of David Hall, one person has written about the show like this. ‘Pranayam… athu steth nod matram alla kala yodum aanu (Love… not only for steth but for art too…). Walk through the gallery, you can feel it — the medicos’ passion for art. The walls of three galleries of David Hall in Fort Kochi are adorned with the paintings and other art works done by 30 artists, who are also medical students under Kerala University of Health Sciences (KUHS).

“There are around 270 colleges under the university. We had sent invites to all colleges requesting to send their students who are inclined towards art to participate in the show. The response has been good. A four-member screening committee reviewed the entries and the selected works are exhibited here,” says Gautham Shasi, one of the artists and coordinator of the show. In his opinion, it is the first-of-its-kind in the history of the university.

Students pursuing MBBS, BDS, B Pharm, Nursing and Ayurveda are part of this show, which depicts various themes. There are realistic and abstract paintings that talk about nature, wildlife, humans, nostalgia, womanhood, etc. Not merely paintings, you can also see collages and works done on other mediums like cloth at the exhibition. Some artists have taken references from the internet and later improvised the image.

“This new trend is an effort to promote art talents in the health sector,” says Gautham, the third year MBBS student at Kottayam Medical College. “This idea stemmed from the five-day art exhibition Varnam we held on our campus in February this year.”

That show was a success and later Government Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram, also conducted an exhibition under the name Aardrasparsham for charity. The success of these two exhibitions encouraged us to do this large-scale event. Sanjay Murali, University Chairman, is from our college. He put forward this idea,” adds Gautham, whose works have a nostalgic touch.

One work Navarasa: The Sacred Heart of a Woman, done by the 2017 batch portrays the life of a woman. Put together like a jigsaw puzzle in nine blocks, it shows how she blossoms into this world, grows up, gets surrounded by the envious world, is chained and eventually how she bravely cuts through all the clutter and reaches the pinnacle of her life. Another one, Fishing Lines, set in five sequential frames, is a play of lines. Start from the bottom canvas, you will see a fisherman emerging out of these lines in the second image, fish catcher in the third and fourth frames and the hooked fish in the final one. Cell: The Unit of World by 2016 batch students is a replica of the world map done with a digital collage of microscopic images of various cells in the human body. Then, there is a heart with a plant in it. A large painting depicting two eyes is a group work.

Most of these artists are autodidacts and some of them have come to the venue despite oppositions. “When you are passionate about something, you don’t mind becoming a little rebellious to achieve that,” says Abhirami Baiju with a smile.
Abhirami used to draw as a child, but her interest grew bigger when she joined BDS at Alappuzha Medical College. “I don’t like to sit alone. I draw during leisure time. For the past two years, I have been concentrating on portraits done in charcoal.” One of her works, an elephant drawn using dots has been bought by a foreigner. And, she believes that art and medicine are interrelated. “As a BDS student, art is important for us in the pre-clinical works. We do models of tooth. Isn’t that art?” she asks. She even believes a good smile is an art.  

For Nila, a second year MBBS student, art is a way to find quietude. “I do painting whenever I get time. People ask why medical students do art. It is a stress-reliever for me,” she says.   

The new avenues have exposed a new world before these art medicos. As the exhibition concludes, they return to their colleges vowing to themselves that they would never leave their talent.