A ringside view of India
LIZA GEORGE
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Christian Cailleaux's works capture the essence of India and her people.
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Photo: S. Gopakumar
SNAPSHOT OF INDIA: `Waiting for love.'
It was like a travelogue. Illustrator and comic strip artist Christian Cailleaux's drawings, entitled `India: from North to South,' takes viewers on a ringside journey of India.
Christian, a travel enthusiast, enjoys journeying to various parts of the globe. He visited India in December 2004 as part of a scholarship programme, `Artistes-in-residence,' by the French Embassy.
His visit yielded 20 pages of script, 10 paintings and plans for an illustrated book on India.
Capturing the social mores
His works in pastels exhibited at Alliance Francaise de Trivandrum, capture the essence of society he saw around him.
Instead of a superficial understanding of a tourist who is passing through, Christian's works point to a deeper understanding of India and her people. His works capture the subtle social mores and the contradictions that abound in India.
`Lovers in the park,' for instance, shows a couple holding hands discretely. Their body language and the expression on their face show their fear of being discovered.
Another painting, `Waiting for love,' shows two young men on a scooter waiting ... The divide in Indian society has been portrayed subtly. `Shoe shine' shows a man polishing and fixing a pair of shoes while his own feet are bare.
`Too thin to be seen,' shows an emaciated beggar in rags ringing a bell as he asks for alms from a well-dressed passer by.
Christian cleverly drops a hint of the segregation that is still rampant in certain parts of India by naming the picture of a woman drinking from a glass without the glass touching her lips, `Water and lips.'
That Bollywood has an influence on the younger generation and their love to party is captured well in `Out for a night' and `Bollywooder.'
The desolation one tends to experience in big cities is depicted in a woman looking down wistfully from her high-rise window at the life beneath her.
`The Flying Saree'
The artist's take on traffic in India are shown in two pictures that depict an Indian super-heroine saving the day. Called `The Flying Saree,' she resembles cat woman in a mini skirt-like sari and she is out to get autorickshaw drivers who speed and horn, and two-wheelers who jump signals.
Christian, who visited Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi as part of his trip, plans to visit India in December.
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