CHENNAI: This weekend, six people will take home sculptures that look like they time travelled from the Pallava era. Well, almost. As part of an initiative to revive the art legacy of this period that dates as far back as the third century, Friends of Heritage Sites (FoHS), a city-based group decided to get sculptors of Mahabalipuram to embark on a project that most would have never considered in their lifetime: to ‘recreate’ ancient sculptures from the Pallava times for contemporary buyers. As a result, curiosity for the exhibition of the same, Vichitrachitta that began on Friday evening, has been mounting from art collectors and historians between the age group of 20 and 80.
Taking a piece of the Pallava legacy home, even if only a ‘replica’ is still a dream. And Sharmila C Ganesan, president of FoHS, tells us the concept is a novel as it is economically viable. “We’ve had the sculptors who took on the challenge create six garden sculptures so that way it can actually be used in one’s home,” she says with a smile. And the prices range from `15,000 to `55,000 depending on the size of the stone creation on display.
On showcase at Art Houz on Kasturi Rangan road, amid pots and shrubbery, one notices that most of these are secular sculptures as pointed out by art historian K T Gandhirajan as opposed to the usually popularly commissioned chiselled stone grandeur of gods and goddesses. Another big difference between common practice and Pallava mastery as learnt over time by the 12 sculptors on the job was that angles and movement play a big role in these works. Rajendran K, a professor at the Government College of Architecture and Sculpture at Mamallapuram recalls, “Unlike frontal imagery, which is most common, here each sculptor and his assistants had to visit the site several times because often times it was a side profile something the body of the person or animal was angled in an manner that is not easy to chisel.”
What began as a simple workshop for students back in 2013 by INTACH, Tamil Nadu Chapter, has evolved into a project that has taken shape and become so much more than a revival and awareness effort. Not only is the classic workmanship of the men who toiled in the Pallava dynasty back in vogue again, but today — a world away from where it all began— sculptors tell us they are looking at the monolithic rock structures they have seen a hundred times with fresh perspective. Old is gold as they say, and for once you could say, this gold is not in a bank vault, but out in the open for all to see. All it takes is a drive down the ECR and an appetite for stone, that as the Pallavas have taught us, can be pretty darn splendid.
Vichitrachitta is on display at Art Houz till April 25.