Self-taught artist Anu Kalikal’s exhibition, Strains of Flight, at present on at Alliance Française de Trivandrum, is crammed with motifs carefully linked to nature. The exhibition is like an ode to her early affiliation with wildlife. Recurring appearances of elephants remind the artist of elephant sightings in temple processions throughout her holidays in Pathanamthitta, reflecting her craving for childhood and her battles with psychological well being points as an grownup.
Anu, 42, who took to portray at an early age, was into murals whereas finding out at Madras Christian School. After a yr’s break following her commencement, she joined the Grasp of Effective Arts programme at Stella Maris School in Chennai. Nonetheless, she was quickly identified with schizophrenia and bipolar dysfunction after years of getting the signs.
Conversations Inside at Strains of Flight exhibition
| Photograph Credit score:
Nainu Oommen
She returned to her household in Dubai and didn’t paint for 5 years. “I used to think about portray on a canvas by throwing colors at it. That was it,” Anu says.
“Someday my physique began having tremors, which regarded like epilepsy. When my neurologist noticed that, he requested me what I most popular to do in my free time. Once I informed that I appreciated to color, he requested me to get again to it instantly. His prognosis was that I had stressed my physique with out doing something for therefore lengthy that I received the tremors.”
Restarting took a number of work, she says. “I frolicked as a volunteer at an artwork gallery in Bengaluru and noticed it as remedy. I discover artwork as a treatment for my well being points. You can’t separate artwork from me. It’s an obsession and keenness for me,” says Anu.
That is Anu’s seventeenth exhibition and it showcases 27 works, principally acrylic work and pen drawings on paper with scribbles and dots. “When the tremors are worse, it’s simpler to make use of pens, fairly than brushes. Since school, I’ve been a pen artist. The dotting method is therapeutic,” says Anu.
A piece titled Power, drawn utilizing a pen and dotting method
| Photograph Credit score:
Nainu Oommen
The Rooster and Me, in acrylic and alcoholic ink, reveals Anu in a state of slumber awaiting the fowl’s intervention to wake her to witness the dawn. In Extinction and Nature, the artist laments the destruction of nature. She questions the definition of success and its futility for those who lack compassion. A transparent duality emerges from the portray, hinting on the risk that the artist painted one aspect of the work throughout an aggravated section of her sickness and the opposite when it had subsided.
The Rooster and Me at Strains of Flight exhibition
| Photograph Credit score:
Nainu Oommen
In Procrastination, Anu makes use of acrylic and pen to level out several types of procrastinators who keep away from precise work by changing it with “sleeps of various form”. She makes use of canines to characterize every of them, saved subsequent to a wall, a clock, and a swing— all representing causes for delaying work.
The artist makes use of a pen to attract Pace, an paintings containing horses, as they appeared to her throughout a dream. Unable to hint the place they got here from or the place they went to, the work infers the animal’s unwillingness to make clear a objective, ambition, or future.
Scenes from Strains of Flight
| Photograph Credit score:
Nainu Oommen
Anu additionally additional questions the fact of her desires—a symptom of her sickness, she says. “When you could have episodes of psychosis, you overlook a number of issues, you might be unable to tell apart between what’s actual and what’s not,” says Anu.
She additionally showcases two sculptures on the exhibition. One is a picket elephant, noticed with bindis. “Every thing I do has dots, so I believed why not for this too,” says Anu. The Sitting Artist, an set up made of drugs strips, is a self-representation—the tablets within the plastic instances had been consumed by the artist herself. “It’s a assertion of success a couple of journey I went by way of,” says Anu.
The Sitting Artist, a sculpture made of drugs strips at Strains of Flight
| Photograph Credit score:
Nainu Oommen
The artist provides, “Many individuals have linked with the exhibition; a few of them have psychological well being points or know people who find themselves going by way of the identical. It’s nonetheless a taboo topic in Kerala and never simple to simply accept. Nonetheless, issues are getting higher.”
Anu Kalikal’s Strains of Flight is on until October 10.
Revealed – October 01, 2025 11:11 am IST
