When Thirukkural became a source of inspiration for a city artist

Gallery’. It is an exhibit of the 133 artworks that include various mediums of sculpture and paintings. Interestingly, all the 133 themes have been rendered from the 133 chapters of Thirukkural.

“This art exhibition has been put together by Symbol Company. I have been working along with them for the past three years on a multimedia project on Thirukkural. There wasn’t any particular reason for me to choose Thirukkural as the theme — it was much more of an adventurous foray. I wanted to utilise the extraordinary resonance Thirukkural had on the Tamil psyche and give it a form. Literature can never be contained within itself. As a reader and artist, I automatically would develop my own interpretation. I found people to discuss and develop these themes. Though I found support during my research, the period of work was inordinate,” he tells DTNext.

The artworks have been done in various mediums, but more important is the concepts that have been tried. “Thirukkural is not a preachy work at least we don’t consider so. It is the concise and coiled nature of metaphysics itself. It speaks to an everlasting man and all the artworks are in a way metaphorical object of that conversation. A sculpture cannot be restricted to a singular meaning even if it is a bust of a singular person. It exists in time and attracts various ideas. What we have done is to open the portals for those ideas to come in by creating a nexus between the literary text and the outer world. The audience has now got to respond if artwork has done enough justice to the chapters and admire the transcendence,” the young artist added.