At this art exhibition in Hyderabad, memory takes shape in charcoal and wood

At Srishti Art Gallery successful Hyderabad, a bid of layered, abstract sculptural works successful charcoal and wood instrumentality centre signifier against striking crimson wall. In the play of airy and shadow, creator Mahalakshmi Kannappan explores themes of migration, impermanence, and uncertainty — ideas that talk to individuality and the affectional transitions that signifier us.

The show, Bloody Dark Body, features a colour palette designed by designer Sona Reddy, with a curatorial enactment by Bose Krishnamachari, co-founder of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. Bose’s substance decodes the metaphorical richness of Mahalakshmi’s layered forms. “‘The rugged, unsmooth edges connected the works are the negatives — the fractures that hap successful anyone’s life. And past comes calm, healing, and restoration. That’s what makes america who we are,’” adds Lakshmi Nambiar, laminitis of Srishti Art Gallery.

The exhibition’s title, coined by Bose, carries a layered symbolism. ‘Body’ refers some to the carnal quality signifier and to the sculptural assemblage of work. ‘Dark’ alludes to the usage of graphite and charcoal, arsenic good arsenic to the affectional acheronian we brushwood successful moments of struggle. ‘Bloody’ represents the visceral — the pulse of beingness that runs done america all.

Coimbatore-born and Singapore-based, Mahalakshmi archetypal exhibited astatine Srishti successful 2024 arsenic portion of the radical amusement Triloka. “My signifier is astir fragility, memory, and endurance — and however to explicit these ideas done worldly transformation,” she says. Living distant from India for the past 15 years, her enactment bridges memories from location with those formed abroad. “There are immoderate memories we’d similar to forget, and immoderate we take to transportation forever,” she reflects.

In her hunt for worldly expression, Mahalakshmi experimented with turmeric and fabric thread for implicit a twelvemonth earlier uncovering her dependable successful powdered charcoal. “Charcoal has a peculiar character,” she says. “It tin beryllium held together, but besides smudged and dispersed into the air.” The duality of the mean — fragile yet beardown — echoes her cardinal taxable of endurance done instability.

Working with waterproof birch plywood sourced from India, the creator begins by pouring a premix of crushed charcoal and glue onto wood, letting it adust earlier breaking and reshaping the sheets. “I’m ever reasoning astir however overmuch to break, however overmuch to support — until it evolves into a form,” she explains.

A erstwhile graphic decorator drawn to monotone, Mahalakshmi spent 2 months astatine Sudhakar Chippa’s Banyan Art Studio, wherever the works for Bloody Dark Body took shape. “The themes displacement arsenic I work,” she says. “What I commencement with is seldom what remains. The process decides the last form.”

Bloody Dark Body, an accumulation of abstract works by Mahalakshmi Kannappan is connected presumption astatine Srishti Art Gallery till November 2