H E T E R O T O P I A

I am a painter and graphic artist based in India, deeply engaged in exploring the complexities of human life and the environmental challenges of urban spaces. My work aims to spark dialogue between art and social responsibility, often highlighting themes of human struggle and ecological concern.

My illustrations and artworks have appeared in leading publications such as The Times of India, The New Indian Express, India Today, and The Observer. In 2025, I created an illustration for The Times of India on the Keeladi excavation, depicting a 2,500 BCE human settlement. In 2022, I received the Scribe Tribe Award for Best Illustration from The Times of India, an honor that further fueled my dedication to visual storytelling.

Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of exhibiting my work in prominent galleries across India and internationally. Notable recognitions include the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship (USA, 2013) and the Honourable Mention Award from the Kerala Lalithkala Akademi (2017).

A defining moment in my career was representing India as a delegate at the UNESCO-sponsored International Art Symposium "The Breath of Epos" in Yelabuga, Russia (2010). More recently, my works were showcased in the Kochi Biennale’s acclaimed 2021 exhibition Lokame Tharavadu (The World Is One Family). In 2022, I expanded my practice globally with a virtual solo exhibition hosted by Assemblage Art Collective in Canada.

Currently, I serve as the Assistant Infographic Editor at The Times of India, where I continue to blend my passion for visual art with my role in the world of journalism. edit 

https://assemblageartcollective.com/collections/shinod-akkaraparambil

https://thefederal.com/features/lokame-tharavadu-at-alappuzha-a-mega-art-event-that-celebrates-hope-diversity/

Portfolio of Artworks

https://assemblageartcollective.com/collections/shinod-akkaraparambil

SOLO EXHIBITIONS 

Lalitha kala akademy gallery Kozhikkode, Kerala.

December 27 - 30,  2018. 

The Visible & Invisible  

Sudhakaran P 

Writer, translator and, art critic

When he was in Delhi, in search of establishing his creative identity, artist Shinod Akkaraparambil was literally a fish out of water. The green memories of the rustic landscape surrounding him in his native village at Koduvally, in the interiors of Kozhikode, were still haunting him. But what he faced in his life in the dingy street lanes of the metropolis was diametrically opposite, and there was no balance between the two.

From those contrasting experiences, he started painting his earlier works, more than one and a half decades back, portraying the angst and struggles of the unknown men caught up in the urban rat race, silent and subjugated.

But when we look at the most recent works of Shinod, in the series ‘The Visible and Invisible’, exhibited at the Kerala Lalithakala Akademi gallery here, we experience a total transformation, though the angst about humanity is writ large on them.

“Yes, when I was in Delhi, the images I encountered were different, which never matched with the nostalgic green memories within me, but the urban images did not fade out from me and they remained in a slumber within,” he said.

Years later, when he faced a different life, this time in Chennai, those images in slumber came to life, once again as part of an urban landscape, totally different from the earlier ones. But that was as tiny forms, and he experimented with a series of 365 paintings ‘Point-blank 365’ done in 365 days.

“I try blending the tiny images in my memories in the context of the urban chaos that we pass through in our life,” said the artist.

That is why his paintings remind us of the urban rat race at the same time remaining the recollection of the rustic memories. Yes, his paintings are connected to the physical space he lives in and the society that he interacts with, reflecting the concern about our future in this ecosystem. Interestingly, the larger paintings in this series can be seen as a combination of the smaller ones.

In his works, the forms, from birds and animals to human beings, merge with the landscape around and they are inseparable. The hunter, prey, and the times we live in come to life here with the minimalistic forms that together form an abstract landscape of green memories and dark realities.

Chora The Tools

Art Houz Museum/Art Gallery Chennai, Tamil Nadu.

May 2 - 11, 2014

Johny ML

Art historian, curator, and cultural critic

Shinod Akkarapparambil’s solo show ‘Chora-the Tools’ is a celebration of tools, the craft of artisans and at the same time a question raised at the historical injustice done to the artisanal caste/class by the dominant Brahminical systems. The show opens on 2nd May at the Art Houz Gallery, Chennai.

Chora or Khora is a Greek word that was first used by Plato for describing a ‘space between the sensible and the intelligible through which everything passes but nothing is retained.’ This concept has been further evoked by many theoreticians of the 19th and 20th centuries in order to question hegemonic concepts of space and meaning.

In Shinod’s aesthetic vision, chora again is a space where labour and craft are seen as something that could be used and thrown. While looking at the works, sculptural installations, paintings, drawings and mathematical notations, of/by Shinod, one would wonder whether the artist is problematizing the labour and craft as an essential by-product of the same, manifested through the medium of the labourers and craftsmen.

The more I look at these works the more I come to understand that Shinod’s focus is on the space where the labourers and the craftspeople operate, both public and private domains, from which they are often ‘ousted’ once the labour and the crafts are canonized, accepted and celebrated.

To deal with this historical evacuation of the craftspeople from the outcome of their craft and traditional talents, Shinod uses tools as a metaphor rather than creating an emblematic human figure for the universal labourer (though in one of the sculptural installations he does so).

These tools, which are mostly carpentry implements are placed in a space, which is apparently surreal and neutral. But neutral spaces are deceptive spaces; like the religious and political spaces that assure equality and justice to all subjects who are willing to go by their respective ideologies. In these deceptive spaces, Shinod creates a web of illusion by repeating certain motifs of the tools as if it were a silent assertion of the rejected subjectivity of all those who have been using those implements.

Shinod does not directly refer to any caste or clan system in his works, however, one could clearly see that the larger backdrop against which these tools function is of Brahminism or Brahminical thinking. Brahminism often uses the services of the ‘lower castes’ for their benefit and rejects them unceremoniously once the work is done, an attitude or a mindset that we in our urban-centric societies shamelessly replicate from the building of a house to that of large scale commercial complexes to places of worship.

If the origin of civilizational progress could be traced back to man’s attempt to make tools to make labour easier, according to the Marxian scholars like Ernst Fischer, then the first creators of the civilization should not obviously be Brahmins or Kshatriyas. It was Shudras who made the tools and perfected their skills of using them. But the clever ploy of India’s caste system pushed the craftspeople to the social fringes along with other similar people.

By evoking the notion of a space that is between sensible and intelligible, which holds nothing permanent, Shinod brings out an ancient philosophical concept to counter a larger historical issue that has been persistent in our country for several millennia. In the process of putting in labour to produce a utility object or an aesthetical object, the labourer in this space of production gains a temporary value of the producer only to lose it to the patron once the labour’s aim is achieved. India has several examples of such ruthless evictions, both mythical and historical.

The myth of Ekalavya is one example that comes to our mind. Ekalavya, a tribal boy learns his archery techniques, in today’s concept, through distant education under Dronacharya, a Brahmin warrior guru. Though he had not ‘taught’ him anything he asked for Ekalavya’s thumb as ‘fee’, which the disciple willingly gave, rendering himself useless. Though Ekalavya is not a labourer, the idea of rendering someone ‘inferior’ is very evident in this story. So is the case of the architect who built the Taj Mahal. For the fear of him making another of the same sort, Emperor Shajahan severed both his arms.

In Kerala, where Shinod belongs there is this famous myth about Perumthacchan, the master carpenter. He was the temple and idol maker par excellence. Though he was a master craftsman, the Brahminical systems often refused him entry into the same temple that he had built. He was allowed to wear a sacred thread when he was really working at the site! Perumthacchan was in constant conflict with his own son whom he secretly detested for his superior craft techniques. Finally, as the story goes, Perumthacchan ‘accidentally’ slips his sharp tool from the rooftop at his son’s neck who is working under the same roof. Though the killing of his own son has been debated as a part of the Freudian conflict between father and son, one could also see it as a replication of the ideology that the

Brahminism had indoctrinated in the father figure himself, who did not tolerate another ‘man’ in his own space. Shinod evokes this story in one of his large scale sculptural installations and also in a couple of paintings.

Shinod’s dealing with the issue is subtle and he does not gear himself into the ‘revenge’ mode. The discreet use of familiar tools/images in his aesthetical scheme helps the works to go beyond mere sloganeering. It is not that he wants an immediate solution to the issue of marginalization of social classes or castes, but he definitely flags out the issue in a subtle manner, I would say, with a sense of mild anger and strong laughter.

Of Human Bondage 

Shackles in the Rat Race 

Academy of Fine Art and Literature, New Delhi, 2002 

December 29th, 2002

Johny ML

Art historian, curator, and cultural critic

"Everyone is crying out for peace no one is crying out for justice. I don't want no peace I need equal rights and justice".

...Jimmy Cliff.

Rat Race

Expressionism as a genre of art has got a peculiar mutuality with religion, the expressionists of the first half of the twentieth century, and also the artists of the eighties (generally speaking the neo expressionists all over the world) cultivated a sort of love-hate relationship with religion for them, religion was not a tool for self-realization instead they held that it should be approached skeptically they took religion for an oppressor's staff, a means to relegate the message of punishment and death.

Today, religion has more meanings other than realization and skepticism it has become one of the strategies that help politicians to perpetuate the rule of terror satan could easily wear the robe of a benevolent priest in this situation when an artist takes up his tools to be vigilant he needs to keep his critical self intact in short, he needs to be a front soldier in the fight for equal rights and justice.

'Everyone is crying out for peace no one is crying out for justice I don't want any peace yeah what I need is equal rights and justice' sings Jimmy Cliff.  

Shinod's paintings reflect the same spirit expressed in the song. the expressionism that Shinod employs in his paintings has a sense of urgency notwithstanding it is naive nature he brings in biblical references in his works but he deliberately avoids the adulatory aspects of religious saying.

Shinod's decision to a solo exhibition with a general theme of surviving humanity should be commended these works may not be offering any antidote for social evils however the artist boldly identifies and addresses that social issue in his works he through an expressionist mode confronts religion in his own terms. Shinod does not have answers but obviously, he has questions to raise.  

Mary Joseph

An editor-in-chief at Sterling Pixels Pvt Ltd

New Delhi, India.

"Into that heaven of freedom my, Father, let my country awake".

Rabindranath Tagore's words in the Gitanjali best describe Shinod Akkaraparambil's quest for truth and freedom. His work has always been a projection of his thoughts, and his paintings are political statements, statements of questions that are constantly running through his mind.

The earth and fire colours and the strokes Shinod uses show anger and divide and the confusion present in the world of dog-eat-dog: they reflect the agony of thinking, feeling being, and the burning questions in his mind.