the watercolour of blank moments

i did this work sitting in the verandhah of a rented house where i lived with dear rajesh and son adityan as a 2 year old one. the little son was sleeping and it was around 3 o clock getting evening...i was feeling lonely. i was simply blank about fleeting moments and the food i was making.....i never thought then that life would move further in any way i wanted it to.....before making tea i made this small watercolour..birds were singing and plantain leaves afresh after a rain when the sun brightened a little

his highness 'bahurasas'

who will love artists with due share of dignity?

when do we artists think in terms wider than our reality? all artists away from the hot contemporary locations and thematics of war, machine and media have to give a thought to it with more of a will power...

the sources of global art world tell any artist at locations with lesser pedigree of art culture - " Phu, do it contemporary, man"

but how and when does one acquire perceptions of the 'contemporary'?
it is --- when one occurs on a new image? when one goes new places? when one finds somebody saying 'i like your work, please give it to me for this sum of money? when an international critic adds one's name in a list of artists in his article? when one participates in a show at hot hubs of art ? when one sees strange works in internet of unknown people in unknown galleries at far away places? when one experiences poverty, that pennyless state of affairs in pocket? when one gets more money than he / she could have dreamed of? when one is indulging in a love of all affairs around?
for an artist to think wider than immediate reality has many means and reasons.

yesterday i met a young man who does strange sketches of ordinary lives. they are truly contemporary for any land devastated and ruined by wars and middle men. like kashmir or iraq or afghan or palastine.....somehow he lives in north kerala, in a fairly scenic land but of moderate profile except in possibly tourism industry.

he is an illustrator in malayalam weeklies for a living or for something less than a living. he is not popular for the ordinary sense of the term. but he is loved by many readers of fiction in malayalam. he has worked with some writers who try doing strange pictorial stuff. he worked with ordinary writers too, because afterall that is an illustrator's job. but ofcourse he believes that he made a better living when he was working in his brother's chappal production unit for some time when he was a student.

today he has come to this town thrissur to meet a writer who might buy his painting with some dignity. we simply shared seeing the works of Amy Cutler and Marcel D'zama in my collection. he came with a friend and they left for their prospective buyer living nearby.

there are many writers and intellectuals around, mostly high-salaried class who speak with passion for artist's works (many artists have got accolades similar, for that matter) but when it comes to buy and help him in reality with that damn thing called money, most of them shy away and speak of many other stuff under the sun and have a tea together and depart for the day from any possible cross roads of life. and it is difficult to deal with 'money men' who might help also. most of them simply go for perceptions where it is often difficult for an ordinary person to trim and prune to those fantasies.

artists are not loved for the reasons of reality...

they are loved simply for the reasons of fantasy.....

but an artist like anybody else, has a tummy, wife, kid, family and other things that create problems when he simply thinks 'contemporary' terms 'wider than his reality'.

Ha!

പ൪വ്വതഘട്ടങല്ക്കിടയില് ചിതറിയിട്ട മുത്തുമണികല്

ആകെത്തിളങുന്ന രാത്രി
മധുരമുള്ള ഒരു കഷ്ണം കാഴ്ച‌

നുറുങിപ്പോകുന്നു

മഹാമേരുക്കല്
ഒന്നിനു പിറകെ ഒന്നായീ
പീന്നാക്കം പോകുന്നു

ഹ‌യ്‍വേ മാ൯ , ഏവീടേയാണ് നീ
ഞാ൯ ത‌യ്യാറായീരീക്കുന്നു ആകെ പ‌തീഞ‌ സ്വര‌ത്തില്

the discreet charm of a HARTAL day

അടക്കം

തൊട്ടതെല്ലാം തീയാക്കുന്നവരുടെ നാട്ടില്
ഒരുത്ത‌നു പെട്ടെന്നു തുമ്മാ൯ മുട്ടി
എന്നാ പിന്നെ തുമ്മിക്കൂടേ,യെന്നുചോദിക്കരുത്,
മൂക്ക് തെറിച്ചാലോ ?

തെറിച്ചു വീഴുന്ന മൂക്കുകള്‍
ഹ൪ത്താലെടുത്ത വഴിവക്കുകളില്കുടുങി മരിക്കും
എങോട്ടെന്നില്ലാതെ
അതിരാവിലെ മീ൯ കുട്ടയും കൊണ്ട്
പിട‌ഞോടുന്ന‌ ത‌ങ്കം ത‌ട‌ഞു വീഴും
പാല്ക്കാര൯, പ‌‌ത്രക്കാര‌൯അയയ്പ്പ൯,പിന്നെ
നട്ടുച്ചക്കു കൊമ്പ് വിളിച്ചോടുന്ന‌ആംമ്പുല൯സ്
ഒക്കെയും പാളി പോകുംവൈകീട്ട‌ത്തെ എക്സിക്യൂട്ടീവും
പോയ് പോകും,പിന്നെഅവ‌ശേഷിച്ച‌ ജീവ‌ന‌ക്കാറ്ക്കും ജീവ൯ മുട്ടും‌

പ്രതീക‌ങള്‍ കൊണ്ട് സംസാരിക്കുന്ന‌വ‌രുടെ
പ്രബുദ‌ധ‌മായ രാജ്യത്ത് ജീവിച്ച് കൊണ്ട്
നിങളിങനെ തുമ്മരുത്
ഇവിടെ എല്ലാം പെട്ടെന്നു തീ പിടിക്കും

അതാ
തെറിച്ച് വീണ ഒടുവിലത്തെ മൂക്കും പേറി
ലോറികള്‍ യാത്രയാവുന്നു
എവിടേയും ചോ൪ത്തിക്കള‌യാനാവാതെ
അളിഞ‌ മൂക്കുക‌ളള്‍ഇങോട്ട്
തിരിച്ചെത്താതിരിക്ക‌ട്ടെയെന്ന്‌
നമുക്കൊരുമിച്ച് പ്രാ൪ത്ഥിക്കാം.

ഒന്നുണ്ട് സുഹ്രുത്തെ,
നമ്മളിങനെ തുമ്മാതിരിക്കുന്നത്ലോകത്തല്‍ വച്ചേറ്റവും വിശിഷ്ട്മായ‌ജനാധിപത്യ ബോധം കൊണ്ടാണ്.

translation of this poem was kindly forwarded by friend Dr. C S Venkiteswaran:

The Discreet Charm of a Hartal Day

In a land where everyone is capable
Of inflaming anything they touch
One person was about to sneeze..

Don't (Never) ask,
why don't you then just sneeze,What if one's nose flies off?

Noses thus thrown off
Would then die smothered
At the roadsides, afflicted by hartal

Thangam rushing off to nowhere
Early in the morning
With fish basket atop her head
Would stumble on it and fall

The milk man, the newspaper boy and Ayyappan,
The ambulance that bugles its way past at noon
All would slip off-track

The evening 'Executive' Would also depart
And then, even the remaining staff
Would start suffocating
In this enlightened land
Where people talk with symbols

Don't sneeze like this
HereEverything is easily inflammable

Here goes the truck
Carrying the last nose
That flew off
Let us all pray together
That those putrid noses
That couldn't be let off anywhere
Would never return

One thing, friend
If at all we desist from sneezing
It is because of our democratic sense
One that is greatest in the world

flowering trees

പൊതിരെ പെയ്യുന്ന രാത്രികളി‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ല്എന്ത് ചെയ്യെണം ?
കുഞി൯ടെ ഗിത്താറെടുത്ത് മീട്ടണം
ലോകം കേട്ടീട്ടെയില്ലാത്ത ഓരോരൊ ഗീതങ‍ള്‍
‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ മധുരം കയ്പ്പു ഛവ൪പ്പെന്നോരാതെ
ഒന്നൊന്നായി കമ്ബനം ചെയ്യിക്കണം

പെയ്തു വീഴുന്ന വെള്ളകെട്ടുകളില്
അപരിചിതരും അതീവ നഗ്നരുമായ മനുഷ്യ൪
ഹൃദയ‍ം പറിചെറിഞ് പാടുന്നതു കേള്ക്കാം

ഓരോ പെരുംതുള്ളിയും
ചുണ്ട് കൂ൪പ്പിച്ച്ഒരോ കുഞു മുയ‌ലായി
വ‌ന്നു പ‌തിക്കും

അദ്റ്ശ്യമായ‌ അവ‌യുടെ കൊമ്പുക‌ളി‍ല്നേ൪മ‌യാല് പിടിചു തൂക്കിയെടുതുക‌ണ്ണിനു നേരെ വ‌ക്കുക‌

പിന്നീടു കുഞി൯ടെ ഗിതാറീല്ഹ്ഋദ‌യം പ‌റിഞ്‌‌ തുള‌ വീണ‌തി൯ടെഛായാപ‌ട‌ങ‌ല് വ‌ര‌ചു തീ൪ക്കുക‌

ചുറ്റും തീ പിടിച്ച പൂമ‌ര‌ങ‌ല്ക്കും
പിന്നീട‌ങോട്ട് വ‌സ‌ന്തം ത‌ന്നെ !!

just relax

recent poems

എന്തുകൊണ്ട്?

വരയുടെ പക്ഷി പാടുകയും
പാട്ടിന്റെ ആ ഉറുമ്പ് അരിക്കുകയും
അരിക്കലിന്റ്റെ പാമ്പ് പുളക്കുകയും
പുളപ്പിന്റെ പൂവു മേയുകയും
മേയലിന്റെ ആ മൂത്രക്കുടിയന് പുഴു നോക്കുകയും
നോക്കലിന്റെ അട്ട പെരുകുകയും
പെരുല്കലിന്റെ പ്രാവു വിടരുകയും
വിടരലിന്റെ ചിലന്തി കടിച്ചിരിക്കുകയും
കടിച്ചിരിക്കലിന്റെ ഒച്ചു കുറുകുകയും
കുറുകലിന്റെ മത്സ്യം വല കെട്ടുകയും
വല നെയ്യലിന്റെ കുശവന് ഇഴയുകയും
ഇഴയലിന്റെ ആ കുടം, ഭയങ്കര കുടം പൊട്ടുകയ
ച്ചെയ്യുന്നതെന്തു? എന്തെന്തു?

ഹെന്റ്തു? പറയു?
ഇത്ര നേരം ചിന്തിക്കരുതു

നീയേറ്റം ലാളിക്കുമീ മുടിത്തുമ്പിലെ വെള്ളം
പരന്നു പരന്നു ഇതാ ഝടുതിയില്
ഞാന് പറഞഞതൊക്കെ മായ്ച്ചില്ലെ

നീയും ദൈവവും ഒരുപോലെയുണ്ടു
ക്രുത്യം മിടുക്കോടെ ചേരുംപടി ചേര്‍ക്കില്ല
ചേര്‍ത്താലൊ മാഞും പോകും




ചപ്ലി ചിപ്ലി

റോക്കറ്റ് പോണൂ റോക്കറ്റ്
അതില് പക്ഷി ഇടിച്ചാലോ, എന്തു സംഭവിക്കും

ശൂ ശൂ ശൂ ന്നു ഡെയ്സിയും പോണൂ
ഡെയ്സിയിങനെ പോകുംപോ
ള്വല്ല്യ വല്ല്യ ഐസുകട്ട്കളു
രുണ്ടുപെരണ്ടു വന്നു
പെരന്ഡുരുണ്ടു വന്നു
ഒരിട്യാ കൊടുത്താലോ

പൂവു ചമ്മ്ന്തിയാകും
പൂവിന്റെ ചമ്മന്തി കൂട്ടീട്ട്ഞാനിന്നു മാമുണ്ടോളാം.

അപ്പോ ആ പിങ്കൂണ്ടല്ലൊ
പിങ്കു തോക്കെടുത്താലോ
തോക്കെടുത്താല് വെടി വക്കും
വെടി വച്ചാ അമ്മ ചാവില്ലെ


പാവമാണീ ബേഡ്ബേഡിനു മരുന്നു കൊടുക്കാം
എന്റെ മരുന്നു വേണ്ടാഅതു ചര്‍ദ്ദിക്കും.

ഈ വിമാനം ഫ്ലൈ ചെയ്യുവോ
ഫ്ലൈ ചെയ്താ അതു പറ്ക്കില്ലേ
പറന്നാ എന്താണ്ടാവാ
അതു ചെറുതായി ചെറുതായി പോവില്ലേ

ഈ ട്രെയ്നിന്റെ പടത്തിലുസ്റ്റാറെന്തിനാ,
സ്റ്റാറെന്നു വച്ചാലുട്രൈന്‍ പൊട്ടിത്തെറിച്ചൂന്നാ
അപ്പോന്താണ്ടാവാ, തീ വരുംതീ വന്നാ കംബാറ്ട്മെന്റിലു ഒരൊറ്റാളില്ലാണ്ടാവും

ഇങന്യാണോ അച്ചാ ക്രിക്ക്ക്റ്റ്, എനിക്കു വയ്യാ
അച്ചനു പൂവിന്റെ ചമ്മന്തി വേണോ
എനിക്കു അമ്മേടെ അമ്മിഞ വേണം

ഓസ്വാള്‍ഡ് ഇന്നും വന്നില്ല
ഹെന്രീം വന്നില്ല
ഓസ്വാള്‍ഡിനു എത്ര കയ്യുകളാ
എത്ര കാലുകളാ

ഓസ്വാല്‍ഡിന്റേതു എല്ലാം കയ്യുകളാണോ
അതോ കാലുകളോ പറയു

അമ്മേ മതിയായ്
അമ്മേ മതിയായ്

ഇനി എനിക്കു ബില്‍ഡിങ് ഉണ്ടാക്കണം
ചപ്ലി ചിപ്ലിയാക്കരുതു പറഞേക്കാം

ഒന്നു തൊടാന്‍

ഏറെപ്പറയാനുള്ള ഒരാള്

‍ഒന്നും മിണ്ടാതിരിക്കുന്നു
ഒന്നും മിണ്ടാനില്ലാത്ത ഒരാള്

‍ഏറെപ്പറഞുംകൊണ്ടിരിക്കുന്നു

അറിയാതെ നനഞുപോയ അടിവസത്റം കൊണ്ട്

എല്ലാരും അങിങു ദിനങളെ അവിസ്മരണീയമാക്കുന്നു

എന്തിനാണിപ്പോള്‍ കവിതയെഴുതുന്നതു?

ഒന്നേ ചെയ്യാനുള്ളു

ഓരോ വെളുത്ത പേജിന്റെയുംഇടത്തേ മൂലയില്

‍വാലു പൊക്കി നിലകൊള്ളുന്നപുഴുവിനെ വരച്ചുകോറിയിടുക

പൊടുന്നനെ ആരോ എങുനിന്നോവീണ്ടും വീണ്ടും മെസ്സേജയക്കുന്നു

നിങളുദെ വാക്കുകള്‍

എന്നിലാണു സമയം പോക്കുന്നതു

ഉദ്യാനത്തില്‍ തുംബികള്‍ പാരും പോല്‍

എന്നിലാനു പാറിക്കളിക്കുന്നതു

നിങല്‍ക്ക് നാവില്‍ സൂര്യനും

ചുണ്ടില്‍ ചന്ദ്രനും കണ്ണില്‍ കടലും

കഴുത്തില്‍ ശംഖും

യോനിയില്‍ തീയും മുലയില്‍ തേനുമുണ്ട്, തീര്‍ച്ച

തലയില്‍ നിറയെ മണ്ട്ത്തരങളും ചളിയുമായിരിക്കും

മനോഹരമായ ആ തവിട്ടുകാല്പാദങള്‍, ഹൊ

ചൊറിയുന്ന കാല്പ്പനികതയോ എന്തുമാകട്ടെ എനിക്കു
നിങള്‍‍ക്കിഷ്ടമുള്ള ഒരിടത്തു തൊടാന്‍ എന്നെ അനവദിക്കണം

translation of this poem 'onnu thodaan' was forwaded by friend Dr. C S Venkiteswaran:

To Touch…

Someone who has much to say

Keeps mum

While one with nothing much to say

Blabbers on

Everyone is making days memorable

inadvertently wetting their underclothes.

Why write poems now

There is only one thing to do

Doodle the worm that hovers

With its tail raised

At the left-hand corner

Of every white page

Suddenly someone from somewhere

Messages again and again :

Your words are wasted on me
Like dragonflies fluttering in the garden

They flurry in me

You have sun in your tongue

Moon in your lips

Sea in your eyes

Conch in your neck

Fire in your vagina

And honey in your breasts, I am sure.

The head maybe burstingWith stupidities and dirt..

Those brown legs, oh..

Let it be that annoying romanticism of mine
Or whatever..

You should let me

Touch you somewhere you like.

HIDE and SEEK

Hide n' Seek is a show curated by me in Gallery OED, Cochin.

12th to 26th of July, 2008.

Hide n’ seek
Concept note
Hide and seek is generally regarded as a child’s game. One can play it only in groups. This play involves no toys as such but one’s own expressions, body and all such possible identifying signals being kept away from notice while provoking and misguiding the one who is desperately running around to catch the other from a ‘hide-out’. It is a play with identity as an object/toy in disguise.
Such toying around is delightful with unconscious motivations for pleasure. Scaled down in privilege, it provides access and ownership of anything in inverse proportions, huge and massive in handy forms or microbial objects in demonic size. There is implied something militant and subversive in spirit, in the sense of distorting an opaque reality in order to survive and get hold of it. We are generally made unaware of this militant quest within us for pleasurable access to a world so chaotic and inaccessible.
Play is often branded as nonsensical and vulnerable in the adult world and is supposed to inflict licentious indulgences suiting only to the life of ‘irresponsible ones’ and immature childhoods. For instance, toy-playing specifically is associated with a certain stage in life before getting initiated to a systematic elderly knowledge. They are even graded as ‘maturity / suitability markers’ in a child’s mental and physical capabilities (for children of 1 to 3 years of age or 5 to 7 years of age etc. as enlisted in the literature generally provided by the industry that produces and packages it). Thus, hurriedly one graduates to a ‘toy / play -less’ state of affairs. But the absence of play is an obstacle to the development of healthy and creative individuals. It is also believed that play is necessary for mastering emotional traumas or disturbances.

So, whenever need occurs to hide seek and survive, it puts us in very ‘embarrassing’ ‘caught silly’ ‘amoral’ ‘vulnerable’ ‘minimal’ and ‘nonsense’ situations.

‘Hiding’ is at once about ‘revealing’ so as to continue playing because hiding desires by default a seeking other – a seeking viewer to find it from the hide out. It reveals a creative situation against the rules of all that are ‘make believe’, sophisticated, regimental and alienating.
Curatorial intention here is to identify some such chips among us, multiple small catchers of pleasures playing a sort of conceal-reveal game through their works. Art object is a potential toy, the marker of profoundly idiosyncratic and ‘quantum states’ of artistic subjectivity.

Yours truly,
Kavitha Balakrishnan

for the works exhibited in the show kindly visit this link:

http://www.openeyeddreams.com/hideNseek/index.htm

review by John Xaviers currently doing M.Phil at JNU, Delhi

Art Gallery being a Playground

“Art as an activity is a conflation of child-like play and adult-like responsibility,” feels John Xaviers while visiting a group show, Hide & Seek at OED Gallery, Kochi. Anpu Varkey, Kajal Shah, Kavita Balakrishnan, Neema Vaghela, Pramodh Kumar, Prasad K P, Ruchin Soni, Roopasri, Sujil S, Sujith K S, Sumesh Kamballur, Umesh Unni and Varun Cursetji are the artists participating in the show.
In the movie Chronicles of Narnia a group of kids play ‘hide and seek’ and the smallest girl hides inside a cupboard and slides into a snowy fantasyland to which the rear of the cupboard opened. She returns and takes all the kids into this fantasyland. The cupboard is a threshold between reality and fantasy, an escape route into a new way of looking at the world, made possible through the act of hiding in the child’s game.
In the show Hide & Seek, on view in Gallery OED, Kochi, the curator Kavita Balakrishnan has included a painting by Varun Cursetji which depicts a wooden piece of furniture that resembles a cupboard with an open door, inviting a small child playing ‘hide & seek’ to hide inside, and maybe to explore another world within, towards the wilderness of a floral world, as the piece of furniture is set against an arabesque design pattern.
Children understand the world through play. Pedagogues insist on the importance of including play as an integral part of educating the small ones. As one attains adulthood, this element of play gradually diminishes in the seriousness of life, which Kavita Balakrishnan describes as “hurriedly graduating into a toy-less state”. But adults resort to game-like situations to let off the steam. What is so refreshing about a Yahoo! Chat, or a Federer vs. Nadal Wimbledon final or an MTV Splitsvilla or a Jaane Tu, ya Jaane Na is that, it is ‘play’, though it may or may not throw some light on life.
There are times in the life of an adult when the child’s games have to be replayed. It is when the adult has to play the role of a parent or a grandparent. The parent desires and possesses toys very much like the child; through the child. The parent plays with the child in games that children play. The curator Kavita Balakrishnan is such a parent of a small child. The curator has expanded and transferred the childlike playfulness embodied in her domesticity onto the fetishistic surfaces of the gallery walls, in that she describes in her curatorial note, “Art object is a potential toy, the marker of…idiosyncratic…artistic subjectivity.”
Art has ‘playfulness’ written all over its face. The artist knows that what is being done is not serious, in that it is not going to make any substantive change in the circumstantial realities like a political legislation does, but at the same time there is an assumed seriousness, as in the ‘hide & seek’ game of a child. It is important here to understand that, though both the child and the artist are ‘playing’ as a way of seeing the world in ways in which it has not been understood before, the artist’s play is conscious, calculated and result-oriented. Art as an activity is a conflation of child-like play and adult-like responsibility.
The artists included in ‘Hide & Seek’ are mostly beginners, very young painters in the budding stages of their artistic career, not weighed down by private gallery assignments, but dabbling with paint like children in search of a pictorial language. Anpu Varkey, Kajal Shah, Kavita Balakrishnan, Neema Vaghela, Pramodh Kumar, Prasad K P, Ruchin Soni, Roopasri, Sujil S, Sujith K S, Sumesh Kamballur, Umesh Unni and Varun Cursetji have been shown with a couple of their paintings.
Kavita Balakrishnan has resorted to the pictorial grammar of political cartoons in a triptych of small canvases, where the repeating imagery is that of the Malayalee politician in characteristic white shirt and white mundu, with outstretched banners as the backdrops. In one of the frames, a group of politicians have gathered around a hospital bed, on which a man is ailing presumably in a political violence as in Kannur with a backdrop banner which claims “we condemn”. It is not only in wash treatment that Kavita Balakrishnan has assumed a childlike-ness, but in the very sarcastic attitude like that of a illustrative cartoonist, which is nothing less than the openness of a child who saw that the emperor is naked. In choosing the water colors of Prasad K.P, who is a final year B.F.A student of painting in Trissur Govt. Fine Arts College where Kavita Balakrishnan teaches art history, the curator is not only bringing the young painter under her wings, but also is letting the world know of the young boy’s anxieties about the changing landscape of agricultural land in Kerala. One of the images quoted by Prasad is that of JCB earth remover, which is a loaded imagery ever since Chief Minister Achyuthanandan’s revenue land recovery campaign in Munnar, where JCBs were put to use indiscriminately. Are JCBs toys?
Many of the works in the show have white backgrounds, like the clean white papers of a school kid’s notebook on which scribbles have been made out of boredom or curiosity. As if an illustration of this curatorial project, Pramodh Kumar’s painting is a huge white canvas on which horizontal lines and margins are running across as in a ruled notebook with numbers written in childish handwriting on the margin with white paint which is barely visible against white background. What catches the attention of the viewer, as a rupture is an array of colorful toffees across the canvas, at which a cute cat in pink lines straight out of a step-by-step drawing book, curiously looks on. Maybe this picture encapsulates the curatorial idea and it is not surprising that Gallery OED has chosen the image of the cat and toffees, for print and web publicity, as the identity of the show Hide & Seek.
Equally cute is the painting of a puppy by Neema Vaghela, in which the puppy placed right in the centre of the canvas gladly looks out of the canvas. Another painting by Neema in bright red background has a Taj Mahal on top centre, with so many cartoon-like scooters running up and down across the frame, as if straight out of a 2D animated cartoon for kids and there is an embracing couple in a bottom corner. In Neema’s paintings, the objects are closer to the “potential toys”, in form and affects.
In Ruchin Soni’s paintings, whether the artist has intended it or not, the large figures that fill the big canvas space contrasting from the background in almost complementary colors, are reminiscent of the yaksha-gana imageries of the primeval Indian sculptural traditions, with the bare heads, large eyes and fully rounded figuration. For the same association with yaksha-gana, the images exude a carnivalistic joyous playfulness. Moreover, the spot light beams falling longitudinally along the frame, allows a chromatic tonal hide and seek.
Notwithstanding some misfits as inclusions in the curatorial scheme, Hide & Seek is a very refreshing show that prompts us to look at life like a child does, not only to see it differently, but also to ease the anxieties through ‘play’ as an emotional outlet. Moreover the show is self-reflexive of gallery based art practice as it turns a mirror at the playfulness of the artists and the toy-like functions of the art objects.

welcome to casablanca

happy meal

my name is red

where r u goin ma fellows?

from ma sketchbook of daily democracy

i'm a doll wid ball-like ears

i'm a doll with ball-like ears
i'm a doll with ball-like ears

ma ears r running rolling n roamin, my man
up the sun down the valley
up the moon down the stream

what did u do to me?
what did u do to me?

i'm a doll this way
i'm a doll that way oh!

their words their moods
their tones thier lullaby
but its ours, man
its terribly ours....

my ears,they r balls
my balls rolling
your balls rolling

the roller coaster wat a booster ma man!

wat did i say just now

what did i say just now?

something wrong
something chaste
something witty
something out of the box

a rabbit out of your box, l'ol man!

relax.....

who am i

who 'm i to you, young man

a mote in your eye that quenches you in a spur
a kiss you type 'n clone on my snap of face
a moth that prays up hill n upside down

who 'm i to you, young man
so much of heat
so much of rain
so much of snow

who am i to you, young man
what the heaven u gonna do wid me?

tell me how many strings in your guitar..
tell me how many strokes in mine

tell me, tell me
who am i to you young man?

where were you

where were you yesterday, dear man
where were you yesterday?

in the darkness of night
you were thinking of me
smoking a cigaar
driving a car
dreaming a cheek
entering a gateway
looking over the window to the river
perplexed to change your gear
condemning the high flood of light
that dashed you

where were you yesterday, dear man
where were you yesterday
in the darkness of night
when i was simply staring at the gray leaves outside?

oh my lovely man

a lovely man
in the monsoon country
a prickly man
in the monsoon country

with so full of pains
Ummmmm...so full of pains

o my painful man,

wear it like a radio
not like a cameo

in the monsoon country

these are some inksketches on paper