Artist Shibu Chand’s exhibition, Text/Context portrays prevailing discomforts and disappearances

Artist Shibu Chand in front of a painting from the Situations series
| Photo Credit: Nainu Oommen

“Art is the aesthetics of coexistence and struggle,” reads a rectangular white board placed beside the door to Shibu Chand’s latest art exhibition Text/Context at Alliance Française de Trivandrum. On entering, scrolls of illustrations painted on mediums ranging from a stripped sky-blue lungi to a machine-made khadi cloth hang down the off-white walls of the gallery.

However, Shibu’s experiments with his paintings were born out of scarcity rather than choice. As the world was forced into a slumber following the pandemic, artists like Shibu were compelled to consider alternatives to the traditional canvas due to a shortage of art supplies.  

“I started painting on the lungi, then I found it interesting, and I moved on to other fabrics,” says Shibu.  

The curation contains 14 artworks drawn or painted across different mediums at different sizes which were created by the artist within a span of three years from 2021 to 2024. It is Shibu’s seventh solo exhibition and his third in Thiruvananthapuram. This exhibition contains works from his Limited Spaces series and Situations series, some of which have been put on display at a group art exhibition in Jehangir Museum, Mumbai. 

Recurring themes

The four paintings displayed from the Limited Spaces series, discuss themes of discomfort and disappearance.  

Painting from the Limited Spaces series by artist Shibu Chand
| Photo Credit:
Nainu Oommen

One of the works, which uses acrylic on a printed sheet, was inspired by an incident when Shibu spotted bisons in front of his house in Panayamuttam, Thiruvananthapuram. Shibu says the animals have left their natural habitat in the forest and entered the towns out of discomfort.

Shibu also portrays loss through two paintings in the same series as well. One of the paintings portrays an image reminiscent of a sacrificial setting and in the other, the artist evokes an image of the kaavus (sacred groves). “A lot of things are disappearing from our midst. Mountains and hills are disappearing. The kaavus are disappearing,” he says. Shibu adds how the painting done on a blue lungi derived inspiration from his research for his dissertation on Kalamezhuthu, the ritual of using powdered colour to draw ritualistic patterns on the floor.

Another painting from the Limited Spaces series, done on lungi evoking the image of
| Photo Credit:
Nainu Oommen

Vanishing Thoughts, painted on a handmade Khadi cloth, depicts the symbiosis in nature with his use of dark shades of green. A visible intertwining of elements in the painting replicates the presence of climbers and roots entangled around a tree and cautions how the loss of one can lead to the destruction of that entire ecosystem.

In Unexpected Space, the artist uses acrylic on a canvas slightly smaller than the rest of the artwork in the exhibition. Shibu uses red to portray a fish which is kept inside a fishing bowl, outside which there is an ocean which has a shade similar to the fish, alluding to its removal from its natural setting.

Painting titled Unexpected Spaces
| Photo Credit:
Nainu Oommen

The artist mostly uses scrolls to display the paintings. He says, “Scroll paintings are part of the Indian culture and they are entrenched in our tradition. In olden times, singers would go around carrying these scrolls containing stories and they would go to places and tell these cautionary tales meant to edify and educate.” 

Shibu says he started drawing at a young age on a slate while studying in a government school. “While I used to write what was asked by my teachers, I would also draw the pictures on the slate by the side as well.” However, now, Shibu, also an artist in the Medical Education Department of Kerala in the city, says that his art tells him where to draw next. For him it comes naturally, he adds, “These are all my thoughts. The language I speak is that of colours.” 

Shibu Chand’s solo exhibition Text/Context is currently happening in Alliance Française de Trivandrum and will go on till October 30. The gallery is open from 10 am to 6 pm from Monday to Saturday.