KOCHI: The famous line from George Bernard Shaw’s Maxims for Revolutionists: “He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches”, has definitely put off a lot of youngsters from taking up teaching as their profession. Woody Allen’s character in Annie Hall takes it a notch further and says, ‘and those who can’t teach, teach gym’; or some people have modified it to ‘teach art’. Then there are some who say art is something which cannot be taught.
Meet Teena Kondody, 26, of Kottayam, who ‘does’ art and ‘teaches’ it too. According to her, art is all about giving and liberating. “Every artwork that I do has a different story and I don’t really have a specific place, object or person that serves as my inspiration. I don’t sign or watermark my work because I like the curiosity that revolves around the identity of the person behind it,” she said.
Teena works as an art teacher at Choice School in Tiruvalla and she is also part of a government-run blind school at Olassa. Although she abhors coming under labels like social worker, philanthropist or being tagged as an NGO, Teena’s name has been in the limelight for many social causes like leading the social media appeal for helping people in Nepal after the earthquake and also in raising money for multiple organ transplantation for a young girl a couple of years back. She is the backbone of several social groups like The Peace Movement and KottayamKoode.
Teena, who completed her graduation in Visual Arts from Stella Maris, Chennai, works as a freelance artist too and mainly focuses on upcycling. “Whatever I see, I make an art out of it. It doesn’t matter if it’s a crooked rock or even a dry leaf; I always find ways to add value to it. I have always wanted to start something different related to artworks and that is when the idea of ‘Vyara’ came up.
The Instagram page,
vyara_official, is where I post my work and it is through this page that I set up a stall during the flea market after one of my followers noticed the authenticity in my work and forced me to come out of the screen. Most of the people know me as Vyara and not Teena; it is a Greek name which means ‘a soulful person’,” she said. Most of Teena’s work is kept for auction and she donates the money to the children of the blind school.
“Initially it was difficult for me to understand how one can know colours without vision but after working with the children in the school, I realised how vivid their imagination can be compared to someone with sight. I was surprised to see how some of the partially blind children were able to differentiate colours in a short time; this was something that took me more than five years. Their artworks are brilliant and we keep some of it for auction to raise funds for the welfare of these children,” she said.
Cine stars like Tovino, Soubin Shahir, Poornima Indrajith, Annu Antony and several others are a fan of her work. “Recently, I made a custom-designed gift for Joju George after Stephen Devassy ordered it to congratulate him for getting the Kerala State Film Award. It was a portrait of him on a police cap. It is one of the projects which is very close to my heart,” she said.
Teena has made portraits of people on chopping boards, unused bottles, tins and old discs. She has also got some attention for her artwork on crutches, walker and casts. Teena used to go to the Kottayam Medical College on Sundays and paint on casts for children. “I conduct workshops for children on painting and other artwork. ‘Sketch walk’ is one of my projects where I train young people and help them do wall art for college fests. I also do one-on-one training for adults,” she said.