KOCHI: As an artist, Nikhil Bharath’s view of the world is tinged heavily with despair. The 23-year-old’s digital illustrations are a grim, and frankly disturbing representation of our society. However, Nikhil stresses that his inspirations lie in the monotony of everyday life rather than the trauma of unforeseen circumstances.Nikhil grew up watching his father, a photographer by vocation, using his free time to create art. An urge to imitate him prompted the young boy to sketch people and animals he encountered in Malappuram, his hometown. But an education in fine arts refined his conceptual understanding. Nikhil realised he could draw not only from what he saw but could also allude to larger political events, belief systems and even his own psyche.
“A multitude of images, dreams, thoughts and conversations come together in my head. I synthesize everything to produce a piece of work. I am also inspired heavily from psychological concepts and the accepted understanding of human nature. All of us today are directly or indirectly controlled by unidentified influences we come across in the media. It is almost as if we are living in a simulation and I try to mirror that in the art I create,” says Nikhil who is employed with an e-commerce platform in Bengaluru.
A sense of dystopia pervades. Motifs of scarecrows, dead animals, mutated men, crows and zombiesque human figures populate the illustrations. The dark and moody colours rendered in a grainy texture add to the cerebral and surreal aspects of Nikhil’s works.
“My focus is not on aesthetics. I am not working towards pleasing my audience. Although I understand that a work of art should be visually appealing, I tend to lay emphasis on the concept behind my frame. So there is considerable symbolism rather than recreating exactly what I see. My work is a skewed extension of reality as I experience it. I first draw a rough sketch of all the elements on paper and then work on multiple softwares including Adobe Photoshop and Apple Procreate,” says Nikhil whose next project is a motion graphics video installation that adheres to themes he commonly delves into.
Find Nikhil’s work on Instagram @nikhil_bharath_