ravi varma decoded

PROJECT SUMMARY:

Raja Ravi Varma has been best known as the vintage realist of India whose work touched upon all the themes right from mythological scriptures to daily life of commoners to erotica to gender based behaviour. The society as shown in Varma's realistic work is perfected to being ideal. Ravi Varma Decoded- a 'psycho'analysis of the classical realist' is hence a sarcastic take on how 'realism' as shown in classical artworks is mistaken for 'reality' and how different the two actually are.

Describe your image

1/5

Today, even slightly bold expression evokes a ban on artworks for being 'inappropriate'. We speak about freedom of thought, but in reality a lot of our behavioural traits are dictated as per what is 'ideal' according to traditional scriptures. What was reality then need not necessarily be reality now. The environment is such that the society is offended very easily. This zine is hence an attempt to visually address how evolved we really are as a society. I have put this forward following the visual language of a typical pseudo artsy book printed with the same vintage offset methods.

Reality has no ideal definition, it is just bits and pieces of what one picks up from their surroundings. Hence, prints of realistic art by Raja Ravi Varma were used as context, upon which modern elements (which I illustrated by hand, digitally created or cut-out from photographs captured by me) from today's reality were superimposed for better projection of realism versus reality with wry captions to link them with today's reality.

EXECUTION:

Each page spoke about humourously light-hearted but arresting thoughts based on freedom of thought, attraction, gender based issues and basic human reactive temperament.

In order to give the viewers a break after every few pages, the failed attempts at exploring the reality of erotic content

in the realist's artworks were shown. Instances from Indian mythology where

the characters indulged in pleasure

were interrupted by error messages seen when one surfs banned content

in the modern day.

The entire zine was sequenced such that it begins with the reality of the temperament of an individual and expands into the reality of a society, in a seemingly deep but actually farsical manner.

RESPONSE:

As it is rightly said, it is the concluding page of a zine is what decides how it stays with the viewer. Since the subjects and the overall tone of the zine was very upfront and thought provoking, the last page of the zine had to be something abrupt yet cerebral. Thus, after a formal last page saying "The End", the continuing page had a fake end as shown. This enabled the viewers to take all the content with a pinch of salt and got the project a great response from the audiences.

Featured in the news by MidDay (follow the link below to read the feature):

https://www.mid-day.com/articles/raja-ravi-varma-helps-make-a-point/20849154

Exhibited and sold at Carpe Diem, Goa

Exhibited and sold at Art& Found by Aditya Mehta,

Mumbai

Exhibited and sold at Bombay Duck Shop by Zeenat

& Sameer Kulavoor

Exhibited and sold at Filter by Alok Nanda & Co, Mumbai

back