When bones, cow-dung heighten the viewer's experience

Kochi: An installation art by a budding talent from a family of artists is creating waves at the Students' Biennale with its rarity, for the creator has splendidly blended unusual materials that he chose as a medium to give perfection to his creation.

Along with paintings, artist Nandu Krishna mainly used cow dung and bones of animals to heighten the viewer's experience of his work 'Here I was Born'. Water colour, too, was applied in small degrees, primarily as a sketching tool, to give the finishing touches.

The installation artwork, displayed at Mattancherry VKL Warehouse and Arman Building, is catching the imagination of the audience, especially foreign tourists.

It was the majestic mountain ranges and the beautiful landscape around his house at Kuttiady, Kozhikode, that Nandu depicted in the canvas using cow dung as the medium.

Nandu, who stays in Ernakulam for his studies, says the creation was born out of the restlessness he had when he could no more digest the changes happening around him each time he returns home. "Changes are inevitable. However, I depicted them in canvas with the thought that all the beautiful things today won't stay permanently," he adds.

"When it comes to appreciating a painting, it's through the sight from two meters away that we experience it. But if we could experience it through the addition of smell and touch, the same will be depicted more deeply in our memories. It was from such a thought it dawned upon me that I could use cow dung as a medium," Nandu explains on using the unusual medium. He added that he was traversing through the pathways of old wisdom and sweet memories at each point of shaping up his creation.

"An artist is present in everybody. Kids usually first sketch rows of hills. Then it changes. Hills and hillocks are always clearly etched in our memories. But the future generation may not necessarily carry it. Because we have landed in a position where the children are not able to see hills." Nandu asks how children can draw something which they haven't seen or have memories about.

Paintings that are drawn on the skeletons of animals traced from the rural backyards that hinge on the concept of 'Asdithvam' (Skeletal) can also be seen in his work. Nandu has drawn his mother herself in certain paintings in the bones exhibited here. The artist expresses his angst through his paintings that tomorrow such sights may disappear.

P. S. Nandu Krishna is a Fine Arts degree student at the Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady. His father Santosh Kumar and his eldest brother Shyam Lal are also artists. He terms the support and encouragement from the family as the key element in his pursuing art studies.

"Natives may not find the novelty element in my works. But tomorrow it will become novel for them. Several foreigners who are attracted to my artworks have sought them. The confidence that Biennale gives is nothing small," adds Nandu.