Magic with coffee and flowers

Kaveri Zachariah and Nirupama Francis were part of a group exhibition that was held at Art Houz Gallery recently
Magic with coffee and flowers

CHENNAI: Remember the time when pressed flowers were in vogue? It’ll be surprising if millennials today did — but then again, there are those like 23-year-old Kaveri Zachariah who are reviving the age-old technique, making exquisite works of art. “Flowers represent a very natural way of documenting my life — since I grew up around them and they grew around me,” says the graphic designer. “Instead of just taking photographs and storing them in albums, I found a more interesting way of documenting them, through pressed flowers.”

Her album of photographs of pressed flowers is titled the Botanical Library of Memories. “Each of these flowers has a memory associated with them from 1994 to 2014 — it documents 20 years of my life. I’ve pressed these flowers and shot them against the back of old library books,” she says, adding that the discoloration of each flower is associated with how much she can remember them.
She flips through, showing us one of her exhibits — a full rose whose petals slowly fall away.

“This signifies the time my favourite aunt got married; I was very close to her. The colour is pale because the memory is quite hazy. But I’ve included other elements that keep the memory of that occasion alive, like the chandanam smeared on the bride and the pottu she wore that day,” smiles Kaveri.
“The idea came to me around two years ago, and it took me seven months to put it together because I had to buy the flowers and press them for the requisite amount of time,” she adds. Her personal favourite is the lotus. “It reminds me of my grandmother — I love its form and feel it is infinite.”

Nirupama Francis, on the other hand, realised that using coffee decoction as the chosen medium gave her the creative spurt to portray every-day visuals. “My work revolves around paradoxes and obsessions we see and are part of,” says the Chennai-based digital artist. “Unfortunately, we have become part of the mess. We are choked with traffic and yet are contributing to it as well.”

Other works depict the concept of paradoxes such as the Western desi (how we are enamoured by western concepts and yet remain inherently Indian) and also the modern obsession that people have with selfies. A standout coffee painting is one in which each brain cell is a monkey — equating it to how people’s minds are never still. Nirupama has been painting with coffee for the past two years, before which she worked with graphic design, digital art and 3D modelling.

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