Reji Arakkal
Born in 1979, in the northern hilly district of Waynad in Kerala, Reji took his BFA from Fine Arts College Thrissur and currently he is a final year MFA student in Painting at Kalabhavana, Santiniketan. Within a short span of his artistic career, Reji’s talent is noticed by art promoters and curators. In 2006 he was selected to participate in ‘Hybrid Trends’, an international exhibition project held in Korea. His works are selected for the national and regional exhibitions and the works are now in major collections.
Reji Arackal would like to call himself a farmer. Hailing from a farmers’ family with communist background, Reji spent his childhood amongst party workers who used to turn his small house into a party office. He watched some of the youngsters making posters and banners. He watched the portraits of Karl Marx, Engels, Lenin, AKG, EMS, P.Krishna Pillai taking shape before his eyes. Reji was hooked then. Reji’s works depict human beings, animals and their habitats in a very peculiar way. They look bloated. They look like inflatable beings. At the same time, the hardness of steel is palpable in them. They are ironic beings charged with the lust for life.
When did Reji Arackal come to know that he was going to be an artist?
“Except for two cousins nobody in my family used to have any affinity for art. My father is a farmer and we were brought up in an atmosphere, which was filled with the parlance of agriculture and communism. I liked the comrades of my father discussing politics and making campaign posters and pictures. After my schooling, I took B.Sc microbiology and soon felt disappointed with that. Then I decided to join the Fine Arts College, Thrissur.”
How did he inspire himself during the college days?
“K.K.Sasi is one of the teachers who guided us. He introduced us to art history and world art. I was mostly doing figurative works and closely following the mural traditions of Kerala. The mural paintings inspired me tremendously. However, it took at least three years to realize that there was a particular element that attracted me towards the mural paintings. I liked the paintings of Brueghel also. The narrative and stylization of Brueghel had something that was akin to the narratives of the Kerala murals.”
Was there any eye opener for him?
“Yes. I think it was a woman who came to model for us. During the final year in Thrissur, in one of the model study classes, I was sitting down on the floor and looking at this woman who was sitting on a chair. This plump lady looked so huge and the lower angle view gave her a different kind of monumentality. Something clicked in me. I painted her from that angle. She turned out to be a goddess in ordinary clothes. Her hands and feet became as enlarged as those we see in mural paintings. I still keep this painting as a treasure with me.”
The bloated figures and stylization make the viewer to think about the works of Jogen Chowdhury...
“Many people, when they see my works for the first time, have tried to connect them with the works of Jogen Chowdhury. There are two reasons for this; one, their maximum reference ends with the works of Jogen Chowdhury. Two, they look at my status as a student in Santiniketan. As I said before, my stylization came from a classroom where I saw a woman from a lower angle. After finishing that painting, slowly I realized that the general body structure of the Keralites was like that of the model. They are all plump figures. My family members are also like that. Then I had a re-look at the murals with this realization. The socio-cultural specificity of bodies is visible there in murals too. Then I looked at the ritualistic performance of Theyyam from Malabar. They too are exaggerated in every aspect. My stylization grew out of these influences.”
What does he try to say in his paintings?
“I like fun. I like ironical statements. My paintings are humorous statements. They capture human beings in certain situations. And slowly they turn into objects in themselves. They become bloated like balloons. When I paint the portrait of ‘Kalyani’, an ordinary woman from Kerala, she transforms herself into a modern day punk with pierced breasts. I like these exaggerations that make the ordinary people into something else. Using my imagination I turn a woman worker into a mother goddess. But this mother goddess is actually cutting a jack fruit.”
His figures are erotically charged…
“Eroticism is an ingrained quality of human beings. In my works I have given an added accent to this factor. In fact, my emphasis is not on eroticism for the sake of being erotic. Those figures in conjugation really become abstract forms or even geometrical forms. And if you look at them closely, you cannot discern a man from a woman. They are all erotically charged up human beings.”
How was his earlier works like?
“Once I came to Kolkata for the first time, what impressed me was the view from an over bridge. Down there I could see several railway lines and trains. It gave me a bird’s eye view of the city. I noticed the electricity towers. My early works in Santiniketan were an attempt to capture this feeling of the city using a kind of perspective. Then I found several of my contemporaries were attempting on the same. So I abandoned that soon.”
What did he find in Santiniketan?
“Pigs, dogs and santal huts. These are the three things that I invited into my pictorial format. I learned a lot from the pigs wandering all around the Santal villages. I made a painting titled ‘Fertility’ where you can see a dog with innumerable udders. I have painted pigs also like that. Now I am making a series on the Santal huts.”
What is Reji’s favorite medium?
“I like to work with oil on canvas. But I have found Nepali paper a very interesting medium. The texture of the paper is very interesting and it gives a feel of the subject that I am handling.”
What does Reji think about the art market?
“People say that I am an early success. I don’t know about that. But art market is good as far as it helps the artists to work the way they want. I am not so much looking at market in terms of pure currency. At this stage I feel like having money only for working in a dignified atmosphere. It could change as the years pass.”
Where do we find Reji in the coming years?
“I will be working. And will be laughing too because for me a work of art should make the viewer happy and from that happiness to serious contemplation. I look at myself as a farmer and my works are very intimate expression of that feeling.”
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