Bait Al Serkal
Part 5 of the photo tour of Sharjah Biennial 12, 5 March - 5 June 2015. Curator: Eungie Joo; Associate Curator: Ryan Inouye. 51 artists and groups.
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Venue: Bait Al Serkal
Untitled. 2015
Oil, acrylic and carving on terracotta bricks
Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation
Unnikrishnan C was born into a family traditionally engaged in basket weaving in Pezhumpara in rural Kerala. His work draws from his surroundings, especially the imagery and belief system he encountered at home. While an art student, he started painting the terracotta bricks on the walls of his home, creating one painting a day like pages of a diary not limited to the present.
Unnikrishnan’s paintings and carvings on brick record intimate scenes of life in the city and anecdotes of his relations with people and objects. These modest vignettes reveal the artist’s urge to archive objects and ways of living that face extinction as rural Kerala sees the collapse of traditional economies centred on craft and textiles. Untitled (2015) is a freestanding wall composed of more than three hundred painted and carved bricks that the artist has created in Pezhumpara and on site in Sharjah. Assembled as a wall dissecting the space, together these fragments suggest various structural possibilities of space and human behaviour in certain contexts.
© Photo: Haupt & Binder
© Text: SB12 Guidebook
Part 5 of the photo tour of Sharjah Biennial 12, 5 March - 5 June 2015. Curator: Eungie Joo; Associate Curator: Ryan Inouye. 51 artists and groups.