BETWEEN DEATH & DESIRE

Exploring the urgency of our instincts and the darkness in our hearts, T. Venkanna comes up with works that overwhelm, suggests Jasmine Shah Varma.

- Jasmine Shah Varma

T. Venkanna’s studio is a microcosm of the artist’s mind. There is a wooden table in the right corner for making watercolours, drawings and small-scale works. A pile of brushes in a variety of sizes lies on an adjacent table. A few feet away there is a tall table with longer, wider, bushier brushes and a heap of paint tubes. Taped to the walls are small drawings, prints and some doodles made directly on the walls. Elsewhere, there are rolls of artwork and a printmaking machine. Outside this enclosed space, in the exhibition area, a dozen artisans from Lucknow’s Kalhath Institute are focused, needle in hand, on detailed, embroidered artworks. There is a conspicuous vibe of feverish activity.

This space in Mumbai’s Gallery Maskara has been Venkanna’s temporary studio since 2022. Previously, he has worked out of Baroda, where he completed a Master’s in Printmaking in 2006 at the Faculty of Fine Arts, M. S. University.