The Open Studio / Kotha Revanth
Kotha Revanth
Gurrapothu
A festival dancer painted onto the weave of a leaf mat
A green face with horns striped red and green.
White dots sit on it like grains of rice.
Red cloth with small white stars swings from the shoulder.
One hand is up. One foot leaves the ground.
Under the paint the leaf keeps its weave.
The dancer is made of small squares of mat
and still he will not stand still.
The work
Kotha Revanth grows up in the Naikpod tribal community in Mulugu district. As a child he makes masks for festivals such as Laxmi Devara and Pothuraju. In Gurrapothu a dancing figure wears a green horned mask. Kotha paints in acrylic straight onto a palm-leaf mat handmade in a tribal region. He does not hide the weave. Each square of leaf breaks the colour into small blocks. The body seems to move across the mat.
In the artist’s words
“I paint directly on palm-leaf mats made in tribal areas. I let their natural texture become part of the artwork. My work is inspired by festivals such as Laxmi Devara and Pothuraju. As children we made masks. I want to show that tribal culture is not limited to the past. It is living and changing.”
- Theme
- Ritual masks and memory
- Material
- Acrylic on handmade palm-leaf mat
- Size
- 40.64 × 30.48 cm
- Year
- 2025
- Edition
- 1
- Framed
- No
- About the artist
- Suravaram Pratapa Reddy Telugu University
- From
- Mulugu district
- Code
- RC-522
