Catalogue / Janani
See it on a wall
Shown at true size: 57 × 55 cm. About the size of a poster. The person is about 170 cm tall. Every work is shown whole, never cropped.
Janani
Feeding birds
The sparrows trust the old hand. The new one must wait
Six palms open on paper the colour of a mud doorstep.
Each one keeps a small white hill of rice.
Wings cut through the circle, brown feathers drawn line by line.
At the centre, lilac points turn like a star of folded paper.
One bird eats. One bird waits.
The ink moves slowly, the way trust moves.
The work
Feeding Birds begins with Janani's memory of kolams. These rice flour patterns at the door of a home are also food for birds and insects. Here hands open in a ring like a kolam. Each palm holds a small heap of rice. The sparrows know the elder's hand. They are not yet sure of the younger one. It is reaching out for the first time. Janani builds the image slowly in pen, line after line. For her, trust grows the same way, through repeated gestures of care.
In the artist’s words
“I was trying to understand how memories and emotions stay with us even when the moment is gone. I mainly used pen on paper because building an image slowly through repeated lines makes me spend a lot of time with the thought behind it. Memories aren't perfect or fixed. They change as we remember them.”
Not for sale
Shown with the artist’s permission. This work is not for sale.
- Theme
- Inherited care and trust
- Material
- Ink on paper
- Size
- 55 × 57 cm
- Year
- 2026
- About the artist
- Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath
- From
- Coonoor
- Code
- RC-8188
- @asethete_owl
Meet the artist
