Every stone has a story to tell. Odisha-born sculptor Adwaita Gadanayak intends to let them tell their story through his sculptures.
Gadanayak was in Kozhikode recently as part of a national sculptors’ camp organised jointly by the Kerala Lalitha Kala Academy, the District Tourism Promotion Council and the district administration with the aim of creating public sculptures that will redefine the city landscape.
Twelve sculptors from different parts of the country were part of the camp, which began on May 15.
Gadanayak’s work consists of 18 pieces of stone, each of them shaped to represent a wave. “These stones were taken from Kozhikode itself and they know what the city has gone through since its earliest origins. I am just cleaning off a few layers and letting them tell their own stories,” he says. His sculpture will be appropriately placed near the sea where it will be allowed to interact with their more fluid counterparts.
Gadanayak, 47, was born in a small village of Dhenakal in Odisha. He did his MFA from the Delhi College of Art and completed his post graduation from the Slade College of Fine Arts in London in 1995. Among his famous outdoor displays are a sculpture titled ‘Meditation’ in London, a full-scale replica of Hriday Kunj, the residence of Mahatma Gandhi and his wife Kasturba in Satyagraha Ashram at Sabarmati where they lived from 1918 to 1930, a seated sculpture of Mahatma Gandhi and a black marble sculpture of Mahatma Gandhi followed by some of the marchers on the famous Salt March. He has held exhibitions across the country and outside as well, including in countries like Denmark, Scotland, Mexico and South Africa. He was awarded the Indian National Lalit Kala Akademi Award and the Commonwealth Scholarship in 1993, the Odisha Lalit Kala Akademi Award in 1989 and the Scottish International Sculpture Award in 1996.
Other sculptors taking part in the camp include Shanthiniketan alumnus KS Radhakrishnan who is also serving as the camp director, Bengali sculptors Sourav Jana and Nantu Behari Das, Pradeep Kambathalli, Rajendra Kumar Tikku and Tripura-based Deepika Saha, who is also the lone female artiste in the camp. Working with them are leading artistes from the state including VK Rajan, KP Soman, PH Hochmin, Johns Mathew and Joseph Varghese. The sculptors all come from diverse backgrounds and their sculptures make for particularly interesting analysis as each of them are a physical representation of the imprints that Kozhikode and Kerala have left on their makers.
Pradeep Kambathalli’s Bangalore upbringing can be spotted in his work as he was struck by the growing urbanisation that was engulfing the state. “One thing that struck me very powerfully about Kerala was that you cannot tell where one city ends and another starts. It is just an endless row of buildings and I often think that it is the same town going on and on. So it is this aspect that I am trying to bring out in my sculpture,” he says. His sculpture depicts a cluster of buildings springing up from a sack but he maintains it is not a critique of urbanization. “It is not up to me to decide if it is good or bad. I am merely bringing out the realities,” he says.
While the sculptors who have come from outside the state have traces of what they have experienced in their short stint in Kerala, some of the Malayalee sculptors have chosen to go back to their childhood and youth to capture the essence of the state. K P Soman has derived inspiration from the Kathakali performances of Kalamandalam Hyderali and Kalamandalam Gopi while Johns Mathew has based his sculpture on an incident that dominated newsreels a few years ago — the Plachimada struggle against the misuse of ground water by Coca Cola. Mathew did his B Com from the Calicut University and his BFA and MFA from Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University, Baroda. He has conducted exhibitions in many countries including Greece and has participated in an artists’ camp at the S K Pottekkad Cultural Centre.
“My sculpture comprises of four pieces and the top piece is a model of a well that I saw in Plachimada. Rainwater will collect in the structure which will trickle down to the two human figures placed below. I have symbolically placed the well at the top because according to me birds and animals should be given the first preference. We humans, who grossly misuse nature, only deserve second place,” he says.