Interplay of elements
SHILPA NAIR ANAND
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Anila Jacob's sculptures are an aesthetic blend of ideas that are captured in an interesting combination of media.
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PHOTOS: H VIBHU
VISUAL TREAT: Anila Jacob fuses metal and wood to give the elements remarkable fluidity.
Anila Jacob works under the sky and as if giving her company, the Periyar flows by quietly. Serenity pervades, punctuated by the hiss of the welder's torch as he welds elements of Anila Jacob's sculptures together. The sculptures created here are a melange of ideas and elements, wrought together by a sensibility unique in its expression and interpretation of the imagined.
No newcomer to the art scene, Anila can safely be called one of Kerala's foremost contemporary artists who belongs to a generation that had to work hard to prove its mettle. Trained under the legendary K.C.S. Paniker, the moving force behind Cholamandalam Artists Village in Chennai, at the Government School of Arts and Crafts in Chennai, her works are creating a stir in Chennai art circles.
30 years of experience
Anila has been sculpting for more than 30 years now, starting at a time when art was not big business. There was a strong presence of women such as Arnawaz Vasudev, T. K. Padmini and Rani Nanjappa in the Madras Art Movement of the 1960s, and Anila Jacob was among them.
"Now it is so easy to make money, unlike before when it was so hard to make money being an artist. Back then artists had to toil, to put in lot of hard work to prove themselves," she says.
In 1963, she won an award at the exhibition of Ceramic Art in Washington and in 1965 she won the Lalitakala Akademi's National Award for sculpture. She works with copper, brass and bronze combined occasionally with teak or rosewood. Anila has also worked with various other mediums such as granite, wood and clay among others. The result is an interesting interplay of elements; the manner in which she intricately works the disparate elements to her advantage is a visual treat. Considering the structured nature of her medium, she fuses metal and wood to give the elements remarkable fluidity. The sculptures have a distinct tribal feel, and some of her wood sculptures are reminiscent of African Totem poles. "I have been inspired by African totem poles. Each part has a story to tell and that is what I attempt to do."
And stories are what Anila's sculptures tell, there is the unmistakable element of the abstract in her sculptures. Nature - birds and animals and the human form - constitutes the semantics of her work.
There was, however, a break, "which was not really a break," in her career, the result of a move abroad. "It cannot be called a break because I continued to work and in fact sent my works to Cholamandalam," says Anila.
It was the Cholamandalam connection that got her back into the active art circuit. It was artist S. Nandagopal, K.C.S. Paniker's son who "pushed" her into conducting an exhibition. "Spurred by the response to her exhibition in Chennai, Anila plans to exhibit her works in other cities in India as well.
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