The enchanted feminine spirit

KOCHI: Anupama Alias’s paintings tell a story, something magical, whimsical and fantastical. It transports the viewers into her imagined world. It attracts you with the bright and pastel palettes but leaves you in melancholy, a sense of nostalgia, at a loss.

For the Angamali-based painter, art is personal as well as political. Her subject is always the self, but with an otherwordly touch like the heroine of a fantasy story, who may very well be from a page out of the Bible. Her series presented at the Lokame Tharavadu exhibition, Island of Hope, is inspired by her thoughts and experience during the disastrous 2018-flood a time that made her feel like she was on a lonely island, the last piece of land around her feet. 

One of her work, Bhavitha, that is 12 feet long, portrays the self wearing a long mask. She is metamorphosing into something divine, someone godlike. Kind of like the mask gives her powers, opportunities that weren’t there before, and gives her divinity. “In Theyyam and many other art forms also this happens. The masks transform the artist, they become someone else. A presence of divinity surrounds them. Things that we couldn’t do before are now effortless.” Bhavitha is the character she designed, a woman under a mask, who is standing in a flooded room, the water surrounding her. 

Anupama was never far removed from the world of art. Her father was also an artist. Without any reluctance, she shares her journey of becoming a painter, her genesis as an artist. “At first, I didn’t know what to draw. So I started with myself with matters that are personal to me. Then I gradually started painting the gender issues that I saw around me, or that I read in stories.

So, I started addressing these issues through my works.” Anupama was studying Bachelor of Fine Arts in Applied Arts when she got interested in painting. The Kerala Lalithakala Academy winner has high hopes for the Lokame Tharavadu exhibition. She hopes the festival-like event to make a mark in Kerala’s history and bring world recognition to various Malayali artists who otherwise have very few opportunities to shine. Find her works at New Model Society Building