The Open Studio / Krishna Ganapati
Krishna Ganapati
Shan-mukha (the one with six face)
Five windows show the land. The sixth is painted shut
The first square is black enamel, shining like a road after rain.
Then the red comes, curling like ink dropped in water.
A pale blue band holds each horizon still.
Charcoal finds a hill, a ring cut deep into the ground, a boat under small flags.
A saw blade circles three round tools.
Six faces of one land, each watching what is taken.
The work
Krishna Ganapati grew up in Mavinkurva, near Honnavar, among coconut plantations, laterite soil, the sea and the backwaters. Ganapati has watched that land change. Shan-mukha means the one with six faces. Here, six square panels sit in a grid. Red and white swirls of Chinese ink fill five of them. Four are cut into shapes like a saw blade and a drop. Over the ink, charcoal draws a hill, a ring dug into the ground, a boat and a long machine. The first panel is only black enamel.
In the artist’s words
“My practice explores how landscapes are changed through human interventions and how land slowly becomes a commodity through extraction, construction and different kinds of development. I don't want to just represent a landscape. I want to show the layers of what has happened to it: what has been removed, added, changed or left behind.”
- Theme
- Land changed by people
- Material
- Charcoal, Chinese ink and enamel on Canson paper
- Size
- 38 × 56 cm
- Year
- 2025
- Edition
- 1
- Framed
- No
- About the artist
- SN School of arts and communication, University of Hyderabad
- From
- Hyderabad
- Code
- RC-422
