KOCHI: As a young girl, Malappuram-native Avani K L remembers tearing pages from her notebooks to doodle a woman in a saree. More often than not, she would sketch a bride in all regal attire donning the finest of jewels. Avani's parents, both teachers, encouraged her artistic pursuits and growing up amid relatives who were artists in their own right fostered her creative avocation.
Even when she was in school, Avani was certain to take up art as a career. She trained with a teacher and participated in numerous art competitions which paved the way for her enrollment in Government College of Fine Arts, Thrissur. Over the years, the 23-year-old's practice has evolved from pen and paper sketches to digital illustrations but the one thing that has remained constant is her preoccupation to interpret the female experience through her work.
"I try to depict or recreate the fears, sorrows, joys, insecurities and uncertainties that women are confronted with in their daily lives. Also, it is important for me to represent real women and not ascribe to normative standards of beauty. Going forward, my attempt would be to come up with an alternate definition to feminine beauty," says Avani.
Avani's protagonists are almost always women, solitary in the frame and positioned in a blank space with little context of setting or backdrop. In a majority of the series, the artist also does not give her characters facial features as if to erase differences and communicate a collective sense of everywoman. However, there is one distinctive characteristic that is common to all of Avani's works, the women in the portraits are unequivocally dark skinned and inspired by the people she sees around.
"Skin colour is a discriminating factor people use in India to determine who is beautiful and who is not. A dark skinned woman is considered not only unattractive but also a harbinger of bad luck. One of my series portrays women with vitiligo as a way to convey how ridiculous our understanding of fair skin vs dark skin are. I am inspired from my own experience as a girl child with regard to the subject," she says.
Her major focus seems to be not only to highlight the complexities of being a woman but more importantly to underscore the complexities of being a woman from a marginalised community, an identity that is doubly disadvantaged.
"Women from underprivileged backgrounds often engage in physical labour, there is routine to their lifestyle that is limited to certain movements, places and objects. I am interested in foregrounding this monotony," says Avani who is currently working on an animation series.