T. Venkanna’s art transcends profane reality, to create a world of symbolic meaning. In his works - the depiction of violence and sexual appetites, are used as tropes to examine far-reaching concerns. The longings, pleasures and frustrations wrought by
love. The awareness that gender does not derive naturally from the biological sex of the individual. The representation of sexual exuberance and varied
ways to love - all manifestations of potent life energy, that a society striving for control frequently seeks to dispel. In Circle of Love, same-sex individuals celebrate
their connection in a subversive manifestation of non-reproductive sexuality. Here the will to freedom is given pleasurable rein, and sexual experiments unfurl - elaborating aspects of life that a ‘rational’ society might like to conceal. Amid the
harmony of nature, whose colors reveal a hedonistic sumptuousness, lies a highjacked image of. Gauguin’s Tahitian girl. Plucked from The Spirit of. the Dead Watching (1892), she infiltrates the tropical paradise to contemplate a world that has
broken free of hegemonic control. The artist has long explored how alienation,
boredom and fetishism are becoming default states in affluent consumer society. In Living Doll, a man and woman are together, yet apart.
The only thing connecting them in their exacerbated individual condition is the
inanimate doll, from whom they seek distraction and intimacy. Taking the notion of spiritual homelessness further is Weeping Angels. Here the male and female figure, symbolically castrate each other. That the figures are headless, indicates the thoughtlessness accompanying violent acts. Overhead, angels repurposed from
Giotto’s c.1306 fresco The Lamentation, grieve. A palm tree lies barren. Heaven and Earth are conjoined in sorrow at the horror of war. While Venkanna’s ideological concerns over the years have deepened in intensity, the mediums he employs morph with innovative fluidity. Here, for the second time in two years, he explores the
effects of the needle replacing the paint brush, producing a new form in his oeuvre, while simultaneously blurring the boundary between
art and craft. The co-creation of “embroidered paintings” with master Zardozi artisans, disrupts a wheel of cyclical repetition in the industry of art, in which the new, is frequently the same. The audience is provoked to reflect as keenly on the
medium, as on the aesthetic of what they are seeing.
- Sonia Nazareth
Anthropologist/Writer
