Johny ML

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.

 Lakshmi Krupa 

Writer and journalist, The Hindu

Of love, life, being and non-being

Chora: The Tools, an exhibition featuring the works of Shinod Akkaraparambil, explores the themes of labour, the tools an artisan uses and life

The strong smell of varnish and wood greet me as if I have entered a workshop and not the quiet, pristine white premises of Art Houz on Kasturi Rangan Road. And as I look around the gallery, I wonder if the smell is part of the experience, a multi-sensorial tribute to labour. Shinod Akkaraparambil, a city-based illustrator, worked on this collection, called Chora: The Tools for over four years. Chora is a Greek word and a philosophical term used by Plato that refers to an interval between being and non-being and the theme has been explored by the likes of Jacques Derrida and other philosophers.

What drew Shinod to explore Chora using tools? “I am myself a labourer, aren’t I?” he says with a laugh. On the floor at the gallery is an installation that holds together this entire collection — it is of a man lying on the floor with shavings of wood winding out of his back. Next to him is a carpenter’s plane and strewn around are more wood shavings… The same image finds space on canvas too with layers of shavings leaping out of the frame and dancing in the air. Perfect round shavings framed here and there dot the exhibition too…

A message at the gallery about the collection reads: Here is it; an opening, a space which cordially invites everything to co-exist, a primordial sensorium of preliminary tools and techniques that manually connects and reconstructs the sensible world. The pain of labour has been re-inscribed throughout… The tools that borrowed from the body itself having the potential to break limits, and that, in turn, carry the corporal into transcendence... Chora is conceived as an attempt at redemption by revisiting the basics of hand and tools, back to foreground the footprints, a harking back to the identity.”

In his world, the tools reign larger than the human. And, at a time, when more and more workers in the handicraft industry are leaving behind their craft to migrate to cities in search of better prospects, Shinod’s works make even greater sense. The overwhelming feelings of alienation and pain that the carpenter goes through to serve someone else defines the times we live in and that is the reigning theme of this collection.

https://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/events/of-love-life-being-and-nonbeing/article5996244.ece

Sonali Shenoy 

Writer and journalist, The New Indian Express

Axing out a 'chora' for art

Crescent moon or a gigantic sickle in the sky? In his latest showcase of artworks titled Chora: The Tools at Art Houz in Alwarpet, Shinod Akkaraparambil has combined his two childhood loves — workman’s tools and the Milky Way. And one of the most striking paintings on display is that of a man lying flat on his back and gazing up at the stars and ‘sickle moon sky’.

“I was brought up in Kerala and one of the first things my father taught me was carpentry,” Shinod says. Turns out he was barely three or four when he developed a fascination for the wooden plank used as a leveler (Chander as they called it in Malayalam). “I would imagine that it was a car or a bus and play with it, long before I knew what it was used for,” he recalls with a smile.

In addition to childhood memories, the framed watercolors are also laced with metaphoric messages. Like the large canvas of trees with trunks adjoining the wooden handles of saws. The moral? According to the artist it’s, “Woodcuts wood — the  wood that was nourished by this same tree is cutting it down.” Also, watch out for a life-size chisel suspended high above one’s head. Yes, it certainly sounds menacing, but the tool has been used as a canvas for a galaxy of stars, so that helps!

We ask Shinod what he’s working on next, and he points at the painting with the saws and says, “Right now I have an installation of a six-foot-long saw in mind. So I think what’s next is an extension of this exhibition, Chora part II.”

https://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/chennai/2014/may/06/Axing-out-a-chora-for-art-608756.html