Curatorial Practice : Research and Storytelling: HIATUS IN KERALA: A SOCIOLOGICAL PROBE (WHAT HAPPENED TO ART OF KERALA IN THE DECADES FOLLOWING RAJA RAVI VARMA?)

Final Display

Artist/ Researcher: Nayana K S

Curator: Pranali Dighe

Text by: Rohit Murmu

Nayana hails from the same fertile lands of Kerela where artists like Ravi Varma were born. However, the void in the artistic scenery of Kerela after the post Raja Ravi Varma haunted her, even though there was no lack of artists who pursued the dominant school of academic realism. Her goal in pursuing art history from the Department of Art History and Aesthetics, Baroda, has been to trace the rise of modernism in Kerela in relation to the madras School of Art. Her research aims to highlight the artistic events in Kerela after the period from Ravi Varma to 1960.

Her area of inquiry starts with the four existing art schools of that era and the vast expanse of artistic production that the period saw in portraiture, landscape, teaching, and so on. Nayana is intrigued by the pedagogy of the institutions and their affiliations to the broader culture that led to the long absence of figures such as Ravi Verma despite having no lack of skill and intent.

Her paper aims to present extensive literary articles and journals published during that period. Some of them even find a place in literary journals such as 'Young India’ later compiled and published by figures such as Mahatma Gandhi himself. Evidence of such labor could be seen in numerous articles concerning art, premodern, and modern art that nayana stumbled upon displaying the tumultuous artistic endeavor of that era. This paper is a sociological approach among the numerous historical forces that determined the course of that epoch to clarify the presumption of hiatus in the Kerela visual art scenario.