KOCHI: It’s -6 degrees Celsius in Palchan, a snow-capped Himalayan village near the famous hilly destination Manali. Here, five Malayali youngsters are transforming a long wall into a sublime canvas. Even on chilly mornings, people come and watch them. There on the wall is something familiar, yet distant, a dreamlike neighbourhood.
All the hands that create marvels on this wall belong to an art collective, Trespassers.
“This is our aim, taking art out of galleries into public spaces,” says Jinil Manikandan, one of the six members of the collective.
It all started in central Kerala, at Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit in Kalady, where Ambady Kannan V M, Arjun Gopi, Jinil Manikandan, Pranav Prabhakaran, Vishnu Priyan K, and Jatin Shaji, all met during their five-year-long fine arts studies.
Jinil takes a break from the painting and explains the group’s work. The other three are busy painting; two have climbed on a ladder and are painting on the top of the wall. Beneath, Ambadi is helping them with the measurements.
“We used to create murals back in college to study the medium. And we continued it after college, to understand the art form deeply. Each wall, each terrain offers a new challenge,” Jinil explains.
Like earth, each wall offers something unique. Everything, from the consistency of colours, the right way of mixing, and the brush stroke, changes even within one surface, Jinil explains.
Genesis
Malappuram resident Vishnu says their first work together was where the people were — the Kalady meat and fish market. The group picked a wall there, and set up their paints and brushes. That was in October 2019.
“We created the collective to show people that art has transformed from the times of Raja Ravi Varma,” Jinil says. Raja Ravi Varma was the first in India to take art to the masses. From calendars to clocks, his work is present in every aspect of life around. “Every one in our small state to the large country... all know of him and his paintings. But what about those after?” asks the Trespassers.
Contemporary art, not traditional murals or graphite, is what Trespassers are painting on the walls. “That genre is now largely limited to galleries,” Jinil adds.
The idea of art on walls is a way to tap the potential of art to touch lives, make daily life perky. “Why should they always look at dreary walls?” he smiles. “So we enter their domain and create paintings inspired by them. That’s why we call ourselves Trespassers — our works are entering people’s minds without their permission,” he explains.
Growth
The rise of Trespassers has been meteoric. Working in many parts of the states, organising art camps and a gallery show, with media featuring their work, and making a presence in the Lokame Tharavadu contemporary art show in Alappuzha under the Kochi Biennale Foundation, Trespassers have made a mark in the art world.
“It was completely unexpected. We thought it would take at least six to seven years to make a name for ourselves,” says Vishnu.
For the collective, what matters is the people they meet, the minds they touch. “All of us have our own styles and themes. Initially, we tried different methods—making a person take charge of one work and others assisting him,” says Jinil.
But soon the artists realised the emptiness in etching someone else’s idea. So they devised an eccentric yet democratic method. “We all paint together, taking a part of the wall for ourselves. Soon, the lines blur, and the wall becomes one canvas,” explains Jinil.
The unity in the work remains so overwhelming that it takes close scrutiny to spot the differences in styles or themes that go into the work. “An outsider cannot see individual styles and inspirations but only the whole work. Even the colours we use are different. I like painting human figures using earthy tones. But Jinil and Ambady come with bright pinks and yellows,” quips Vishnu.
Group effort
Before they pick up the paint, the team scouts the site, speak to the local people, observe their life, patterns of the earth, colour of the soil, and then, begin by etching the walls with the essence of the place.
They get help sometimes, when locals chip in. “In Kozhikode, an elderly woman, who used to walk by our work site every day, came up with a suggestion. We asked her to do it on the wall herself. It’s, afterall, her wall too,” Vishnu says. The woman drew a local stray dog on the wall.
Another such story is of a girl who came to watch them work at Ukkadam in Tamil Nadu on a St+art India project. “She came by on most days and talked about everything, from which we could piece vivid images of the place,” remembers the team.
The work was to paint on the walls of a Kovai Housing Unit -— a tall task for the Trespassers. “It was just after Covid. The inmates told us of their lives in the home,” explains Jinil. The artwork showed the families inside, linked by the umpteen stairs inside. “It was here that the little girl came to us. Her father, who used to drink, used to beat her up. Once, he slapped her in front of all of us. We couldn’t do anything being strangers there. All we could do was make her a key part of our work,” Jinil says.
Trespassers finished the work, in the hope that it would inspire the little girl and help her live a life of hope and happiness.
Post the Ukkadam phase, the group travelled across Mumbai, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, and Bengaluru, some parts of Tamil Nadu, etc.
“Rajasthan was vivdly yellow. The walls, the earth, everything. Mumbai was full of people. Manali regalled in the cold, with people stately,” Vishnu and Jinil start to speak, as though from images flashing in front of them.
Then they suddenly stop, a surge of a passionate, wordless thought muting them. Somethings can be told only in silence. Like art.
Camps and Thodi
Trespasses have found another way of taking art to the public. Through art camps. “We have taken camps in schools. The first one was at Attappady,” says Vishnu. The team makes sure ‘the pièce de résistance’, the final wall art, is created by the children in the camp.
“A practice is that the artists will draw and the children will fill colours in designated areas. But we want the work to belong to the children and their spread of imagination,” Vishnu explains. They have also taken classes for women who are part of the MGNREGA. And they have observed that there is a difference in the way a child draws and how the elders do it.
“A child is not be interested in realistic images. In one camp, a child of three drew on a paper a few lines and circles and told us it was Urulpottel (a landslide). The lines were water cascading down and the rounds were things floating in it,” Vishnu explains.
The collective now plans to come up with a book on art and children with help from artists, child psychiatrists and psychologists. Towards this end, the collective have put together the Thodi publishing house. “We want to release the book at least by next year,” Jinil says.