Room Without Walls by students of CFA in Thiruvananthapuram is a coherent display of diverse identities

The Hindu

31-07-2025

At Room Without Walls, an art exhibition by the outgoing batch of Master of Fine Arts (MFA) course of the College of Fine Arts, Thiruvananthapuram, oil paintings by Vishnu Chandran R transform canvases into shelves (and not the organised kind). There is a looming sense of chaos in finding a floor cleaner, talcum powder and an alarm clock on the same mantel — an air of entropy further fostered by old, dull walls smudged with betel leaf stains. Each element reveals something new about the owner.
Memories and the Objects We Keep by Vishnu aptly sums up the art showcase by the 14 artists at the exhibition — each installation and its nuances are a slice of their story, harmoniously brought together.
The works are by Adithya S Kumar, Amal Jith OJ, Amal Lal Puthukkudi, Athul KP, Chandan Gour, Jinto Bijo, Nithin Das MV, Rahul Buski, Rahul PP, Rajaneesh KK, Sabhin SS, Sandra Thomas, Shajith RB and Vishnu. The week-long exhibition, which began on July 25, explore the idea of socio-political structures and spaces through body politics, caste, ecology, individualism and so on.
Sabhin, 'a Dalit-Christian artist', sees his work as 'a combination of art and activism'. His installation combines raw materials sourced from his hometown, Neyyattinkara, with multimedia elements made from archival footage on Dalit Christians. Set in two dark rooms, Sabhin reconstructs the building blocks of his identity, such as surroundings, occupation and so on, among others; government documents on display point out the labels thrust on him at birth. Rubber, in its unprocessed form, acts as a leitmotif, shedding light on the generational occupation. 'My work is part of a documentation, be it a painting or a video or an installation, it is about visually representing a particular memory,' says Sabhin.
Rahul Buski puts his tribal identity on display, born out of cultural memory, social struggle, and reality. His works deal with the Muthanga protests, which happened in Wayanad in the early 2000s against the delay in land allotments to the Adivasis. Rahul documents the incident and places it in a larger context of caste discrimination. While the paintings display the community's experiences, the interspersed photographs reveal how the public construed the matter.
Sandra and Chandan showcase a variety of techniques in their sculptures, utilising different media and themes to set up their installations. The life-size installations made of newspapers by Sandra on people in their mundane roles are a result of the pandemic, when she was looking for raw materials at her home. 'Earlier, it was just a set of objectives I interacted with in my daily life; then I shifted it to people,' she says.
Her sculptures were created with moulds shaped with the help of her acquaintances. It is strengthened with paper pulp, sawdust and paper glue. 'The layers of newspapers are treated as layers of skin,' says Sandra, who sees sculpting as a way to recreate people physically with the help of a mould.
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Chandan from Jaipur, Rajasthan, attempts to look beyond the physical body and represents it as a moving compilation of experiences, memories and inner struggles. His sculptures comprise fibreglass, form and terracotta. His work, Broken but Safe, is a portrayal of a universal struggle in an unstoppable world.
Migration by Nithin observes the paradox of stagnation and movement through the lens of migration, about people cursed to run in circles, without moving forward. Displaying a unique structural language, his installations are distorted reproductions of the world, filled with unapologetically 'crude or vulgar' imagery, cautiously placed.
Three-time Kerala Lalithakala Akademi award winner, Shajith, part of this MFA batch, has displayed works from Wiping Out, a series of oil, watercolour and acrylic paintings, about different signs of ecological degradation observed in his hometown Kannur through the appearance of fauna such as a peacock, which appears in one of the works. 'I specifically look at Malabar for its distinct ecosystem and architecture, which I bring to my work,' says Shajith.
The paintings with long, rough brush strokes were made by the artist by attaching the paintbrush to the end of a stick. 'This adds to the performative nature of my art, as I am a theatre artist as well. For me, it is a performance when I paint and another performance when I display the finished painting.'
Room Without Walls is on at College of Fine Arts, Thiruvananthapuram, till August 3. Time: 10am to 8pm