This is my ‘Thattinpuram’ (Attic). The light creeping through the glass tiles, the stuffy heat, dust, rust and cob-webs make this place infinite. Like a pulse of time trapped between two static moments. The things I abandoned here to decay; later metamorphosed into this 4-dimensional exhibition. But ‘Thattinpuram’ cannot be considered just as any other exhibition rather it is a culmination for me.
The venue taken for the show was a small building almost 200 years old, situated in the middle of a huge compound, beside the vast paddy fields and Anangan hills at Chunangad near Ottapalam, Palakkad district, Kerala. The idea was to convert the whole place – the house, its attic, the sacred groves in the compound, the pond, the trees; everything – into a huge painting existing in time. Paintings were hung on trees and bushes; one water tank beside the house was converted into a huge termite mount using old sacks and cow dung. Sounds, animations and installations are used inside the house to convert the whole place into the mood of the ‘Attic’. The timing was taken as the middle of February (between Makara and Kumbha of Malayalam calendar – 8/2/2009 to 18/2/2009)as the cool winter slowly gives way to the burning summer, with the ambience of the naughty eastern wind and the distinct smell of many wild flowers. The art works stood silently from morn to eve under the ever changing light and atmosphere. Nature played her own part in the show. Every art object assumed a greater form integrating into the back ground in which it was being kept. Thus the ambience of ‘Thattinpuram’ was un-documentable really, which can only be experienced personally by each and every individual spectator.