Varavazhi Project

The VARAVAZHI PROJECT is an ongoing effort to historically converge an influential visual culture field of Kerala, the print-picture practices of Malayalam periodical magazines, into the domains of contemporary art exhibition environments. It tries to articulate a cross-section of Kerala’s most popular artists and re-present them in their own cultural location, also in front of a worldwide art-interested public. Here is presented an initial exposition, the phase-I.VARAVAZHI refreshes the discreet undercurrents of visual tastes of the Malayalis. It also tries to critically re-engage with the Malayali’s acclaimed ‘reading class identity’. We work up on contemporary art’s ability to generate an architectonic space other than the periodicals, for a much layered popular visual culture that is created by 20th century Malayali’s favorite illustrators, cartoonists, graphic authors, calligraphic title & poster designers, photo-featurists. This project politically addresses the ambiguous visibility of pictorial meaning in the pride and prejudice of 20th century Malayali society. The pride in picture is reflected in the sheer presence of various text-visual interfaces and the celebration of creative collaboration between writers and artists. Prejudice lies in the way pictures were regarded as an interpretative exercise on an already given field of literature and singularly in that mode. This had opened only a ‘reader’s perspective while the reader’s engagement as a looking subject largely remained silent, secret and forgotten. VARAVAZHI, re-visiting the periodical print-pictures, turns up as an intervention project in this context. What was once conveyed just as an ‘illustration’ or ‘interpretation of fictional content’ is pushed ahead here essentially as a visual experience informed by the new public. Those who once thought themselves simply as ‘readers’ will now get tempted to also recognize the physical experience of belonging to a ‘looking class public’ where quite mundane responses and pretty aesthetic embodiments gain their own currents. The periodical and literary environments may be twisted for this purpose into the temporal and visual environs in contemporary art.When a biennial of contemporary art takes place in Kochi, it hopes to gather an audience who is ready to participate in the event not only as spectators, but as an engaging public. When artists and art aficionados from world’s different vantage points converge in an experience of such scale, the local society gets a chance to re-capture their own visual culture and habits on a fresh framework.   Hopefully for any Biennial audience outside of this specific cultural context, this will be quite informative and culturally revealing exercise pushing the boundaries of their kind of popular culture experiences.Research Guides : Riyas Komu, Kavitha BalakrishnanResearch Team   : Saju Kunhan, Chithra SudhakaranSource                  : ‘Appan Thampuran Smarakam’, Kerala Sahithya Academy, Thrissur.