The three artists I have chosen for Art Brussels 2015 were all born in the 1980's - only 4-years apart, and in neighboring southern Indian states of Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. Despite the closeness of age and geographical proximity, the three artists speak very different languages - both native as well as visual. These differences are further exacerbated by situating their works in the completely removed socio-cultural context of an Art Fair in the heart of Europe. Mother Tongue questions the relevance of "place" and of "language" in a pluralistic world. It highlights and celebrates the very differences that make both life and art - rich with diversity and meaning.
Abraham George (b. 1984, Calicut, Kerala) works with photochemical drawings. His works are an uncanny synthesis of abstraction and representation, achieved by the dissolving of drawing in analog photography. They arbitrate archetypical and singular aspects of form - the symbolic and iconic versus the absurd and grotesque. They flatten their inspirations - local and global, contemporary and classical, immediate and third hand - in a manner reflective of a world in which images are recycled instantly and globally.
Shine Shivan (b. 1982, Pandalam, Kerala) is a trader of identities. Through his works, he attempts to excavate and redefine the psychological constructs, experiences and roles attached to masculinity. Found biological elements and sacred materials are painstakingly assembled, to create works that have a psychological and physiological presence and display delicate, visual complexity. His drawings, videos, photographic and performance works - serve to depict an aggressively male, yet often gender-bending and homoerotic identity. It is one which operates in the slippages between stereotype and abnormality.
T. Venkanna (b. 1980, Gajwel, Andhra Pradesh) locates the medium of drawing as an appropriate idiom via which he expresses his artistic concerns. Further, his ‘self’ and ‘body’ serve as the central trope by which he articulates this. He neither poses himself as an objective observer, nor romanticizes thematic anxieties. He brings into play de-formed bodies, and uses rather insignificant-appearing motifs as substitutes for erotic symbols. This assemblage of innumerable images, layered one upon another, implicate the complex nature of his artistic inquiry.
- Abhay Maskara