Unnikrishnan C
(b. 1991)
Unnikrishnan C ( Pezhumpara, India) graduated in Fine Arts from the Government College of
Fine Arts, Thrissur in 2014.
Unnikrishnan’s practice draws upon idiomatic cultural artifacts and hyperlocal textual references, such
as visual metaphors culled from stories told by his grandmother. His works document events and
images from his rapidly changing surroundings, and taken together, they offer not only a personal
archive but a critical description of possible encounters among tradition, belief systems and
modernity. These interventions can be as subtle as his choice of materials— for example, the
transposition of images and materials originally associated with his family trade of basket weaving
onto carvings and paintings on terracotta bricks— or his choice of training in traditional techniques
threatened with obsolescence by changes in technology (both those associated with the making of
functional objects as well as with vernacular styles of painting). Thus when he learns the technique of
weaving with pine leaves from his mother he both retrieves a form of local knowledge and contributes
to a re-description of emerging relationships between culture and development. The artist lives and
works in Pezhumpara, Kerala.
