SHINOD AKKARAPARAMBIL

H e t e r o t o p i a

Media

My artwork has appeared in many newspapers and other media sources throughout the world.

asianet news

"The Visible & Invisible" Published in Asianet News, Kozhikode, 2018

Doordarshan

Point Blank 365 published in Doordarshan news, Chennai, 2014

Mathrubhumi News

Point Blank 365 published in Doordarshan news, Chennai, 2014.

Russian National TV

Breath of Epos Published in Russian National TV Yelabuga, Russia.

The new Indian Express

Chora The Tools Published in The New Indian Express Chennai, 2014

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

The Hindu

Chora The Tools Published in The Hindu Chennai, 2014

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

Metro manorama Chennai