Self-taught artist Sivasankaran was just 21 when he saw the surrealistic painting, Sleep by Salvador Dali, and fell in love with the art of colours. He was working as photographer in Dubai a then, and is a full-time artist today.
For his exhibition, ‘Once Upon a Time in Muziris’, held at Ethnic Passage Art Gallery in Mattancherry in March, Sivasankaran chose Muziris during the Portuguese rule in Kerala 650 years ago. In finely-etched huge artwork, there is a tranquil-looking river with small boats plying. At a distance, a ship is anchored. On the opposite bank, there is a white church with a steeple. On the bank nearer to the viewer, a man and a woman are looking into each other’s eyes. Right in the middle of the image, there is a cement structure that is jutting out from the bank.
“This was made to protect the bank,” says Sivasankaran. “During rainy season, water would hit the sides with great force and it would disintegrate. So this was made to prevent that.” What is striking about the work is the alluring sepia tone. Sivasankaran, who mainly works with acrylic on canvas, got the colour by mixing brown, black and a little bit of blue. “I used this to give a feeling of something old,” he says.
Asked why he has focused on Muziris, Sivasankaran says, “I have spent all my life in that area. I remember how, in my childhood, the water would overrun the banks and enter our houses during monsoon. And when we would go for classes we would discover that school was closed because water had entered the classrooms, too.”
In another image, Sivasankaran shows wooden ships, with large sails, as they make their way to the Muziris port. The port was devastated by a flood in the 14th century. The 56-year-old says, “I used photos from the internet, consulted history books and studied drawings.” But he has focused on other areas also. He has done a black and white painting of the Marine Drive in Kochi. Today, there are numerous shops, restaurants, office and residential buildings, and the streets remain choked with traffic. “But 100 years ago, it was a serene place. A deserted road with trees on one side and sea on the other,” he says.
In another painting, he has brought up a forgotten chapter of Kerala’s history: The hated ‘breast tax’. In the painting, four dark-skinned women stand next to each other wearing white sarees, with thick jewellery and their breasts exposed. “It shows how Dalit and backward class women were forced to pay breast tax, if they wanted to cover their breasts with cloth, 300 years ago,” he says. All the paintings have interesting tales behind them. In his skillful but simple way, Sivasankaran has deftly captured the history of Kerala.