French artist Olympe Ramakrishna’s exhibition in Thiruvananthapuram celebrates Malayali women away from home

A six-metre-long accepted achromatic fabric Kerala sari hangs connected the walls of the Alliance Française de Trivandrum creation gallery. Printed connected the cloth is simply a coating inspired by the French creator Paul Gauguin, showing lush greenish landscapes and uneven terrain. The artwork features portraits of six Malayali women and is portion of the Voices of the Western Coast accumulation by French creator Olympe Ramakrishna.

Olympe explains that the coating is simply a tribute to women and their interior strength. Her enactment celebrates the lives of 3 mother-daughter pairs: Oliviya-Siya, Sreedevi-Aditi, and Ann-Seena. She represents them successful a stylised and elemental way, with each look acting arsenic a span betwixt past and present, root and displacement, intimacy and shared memory, arsenic Olympe says.

“Through my practice, I effort to recognize the individuality of today’s women from antithetic regions and construe it done my creator language,” she says. “I bash this by exploring the idiosyncratic stories of these women, portion uncovering what is communal astir them.”

Olympe spoke to astir 20 women from Kerala surviving successful Bengaluru, from antithetic walks of life, earlier moving connected the project. She asked them however it felt to beryllium a pistillate from Kerala. “I was trying to recognize what was communal successful each their answers. Their responses included things similar food, movies, covering and truthful on,” says Olympe. “They besides had a beardown transportation with quality and had immoderate puerility memories associated with the State,” she explains, utilising it arsenic a backdrop that unifies the women successful the painting.

“For some, Kerala is the spot of birth; for others, it is simply a onshore of holidays, ancestral homes, and recurring returns. Many grew up elsewhere, yet spent their puerility summers moving done grandparents’ houses, tasting ripe mangoes, oregon observing the dilatory bushed of colony life,” says the artist, pointing retired that these memories are intensified by distance.

“Living distant from Kerala transforms taste individuality into a deliberate enactment — speaking Malayalam astatine home, cooking accepted dishes, pursuing quality and cinema, wearing the accepted Kerala sari whenever possible,” adds Olympe, who had antecedently worked connected a task astir the women of Bengaluru.

Artistic process

Olympe’s signifier combines painting, collage, textile art, and embroidery, and explores representations of femininity and modern pistillate individuality successful India.

“My begetter was a manner designer, and I grew up astir fabric. This is my 4th task connected sari,” says Olympe, expressing her affinity towards the medium.

The artist’s process began with creating a triptych of lipid paintings, each featuring 1 mother-daughter duo. These portraits were aboriginal photographed and digitally assembled into a azygous creation earlier being yet printed onto the sari, the creator explains.

Olympe says she relates to the women she paints connected a idiosyncratic level, arsenic she is idiosyncratic who has moved distant from her location and lives distant from her roots. The creator says she ne'er feels afloat astatine location anyplace and carries a perpetual load of feeling similar an outsider.

Voices of the Western Coast accumulation is connected astatine Alliance Française de Trivandrum, Vazhuthacaud, till March 28. Time: from 10am to 5pm.