CHENNAI: There are things we keep not because they are valuable, but because they hold a piece of us. A dead bird found after Covid, objects collected over the years, ritual materials, a rescued squirrel named Jerry, memories of displacement — for artist K Benitha Perciyal, these traces have become part of her artistic vocabulary.
Her solo exhibition, How Long Will We Live? Or When Will We Die?, presented by Ashvita’s as part of Contemporary Now, felt like stepping into the artist’s accumulated memories. Paintings, sculptures, artist’s books, installations, research material and personal objects come together to reveal how her practice has changed alongside her.
“My span of time, whatever I have in the studio, and most of the things which I have in the studio which I don't want to sell, so for me it's very personal,” Benitha says. For her, these objects are also references — reminders that understanding something is different from truly realising it. “Certain things only you will realise unless and until it happens to you. So all these things, all the traces, I keep so that I understand, I realise.”
That process of realisation runs through the exhibition. A visit to Sri Lanka and witnessing the realities of war altered the way she looked at the world. “After visiting Sri Lanka, the entire way of seeing it changed me,” she says. “After that, I started reading the world news. I started reading about war, what is happening.” Her thoughts turned towards displacement and uncertainty, and the materials she had already been working with began to take on new meanings. Incense, sambarani and kumkuliyam entered her sculptures, alongside objects she collected and restored.
Yet some of the transformation came from something much smaller. Jerry, the squirrel who repeatedly appears in her work, came into Benitha’s life as a tiny, hairless creature she initially could not even identify. Caring for him made her observe his movements, routine and needs. “Then I really learned patience and started listening and understanding,” she recalls. “So even a small tiny creature can change you. So that is where I shifted to another person as well.”
Pain, too, is often present in her work through absence rather than spectacle. In one work inspired by Michelangelo’s Pietà, Benitha chose not to depict the dead Christ in his mother’s arms. “I don't want to show the pain of a mother holding a dead son. So I showed the absence of his presence.”
Her questions around faith are equally personal. Through collected mother-and-child figures and damaged ritual objects, she asks: “What is faith? That is my question.” The works become a way to examine what people repair, replace and continue to believe in, even when circumstances change.
Alongside Benitha’s deeply personal archive, Krishnaswamy approaches continuity from a different direction. In Continuiverse, Ayyanar becomes a starting point for thinking about protection, evolution and humanity’s relationship with nature. “From the Stone Age, as a human form, you need protection, evolution. So, from there, in that fear, there is a surrender in nature. So, the continuity of that is what I see in the Ayyanar tradition.”
For him, Ayyanar is part of a wider human story: a tradition that has moved from terracotta to cement, brick and steel as the materials around us change. He describes this not simply as artistic reinterpretation, but as “human evolution.”
That idea of transformation also determines his materials. Metal, steel and electric light become contemporary extensions of an older visual language. “This is a continuous process. It is an ever-changing matter. It is continuously changing. If we do the same show, it will be in a different form. Nothing is fixed,” he says.
And the work, he believes, changes again when people encounter it. “There is no single interpretation. When you see it, you get a different idea. In that, an imperceptible energy is transferred.”
Contemporary Now: Edition III runs till August 25, while C. Krishnaswamy’s Continuiverse: Sculptures by C. Krishnaswamy continues at Ashvita’s until September 18.