The Open Studio / Kotha Revanth
Kotha Revanth
Untitled
Childhood festival masks return with wide eyes and black hands
Rust red on one side, river green on the other.
A single eye opens in a mask and does not blink.
Black hands lift as if a drum has started.
A horned head leans in, teeth set like a string of beads.
Red paper with peacock feathers rides on a moving body.
Charcoal lines run under everything, like roots under a field.
The work
Kotha Revanth grew up in a village in Mulugu district among rivers, trees and animals. The artist belongs to the Naikpod tribal community. In childhood, Kotha made masks for festivals such as Laxmi Devara and Pothuraju. Those memories shape this work. Masked figures with one wide eye stand beside horned animal heads. Kotha builds the surface with layers of acrylic wash. Charcoal adds rough lines. Pasted decorative paper adds texture and depth. The aim is not to copy old forms but to give them a new, personal language.
In the artist’s words
“I am trying to explore my connection with the Naikpod tribal community and express our culture, traditions, memories and relationship with nature. I use mask making to explore identity, tradition, ritual and memory. I am not trying to simply copy traditional forms. I want to reinterpret them through my own contemporary visual language.”
- Theme
- Festival masks and memory
- Material
- Acrylic washes, charcoal and pasted decorative paper
- Size
- 152.4 × 91.44 cm
- Year
- 2026
- Edition
- 1
- Framed
- No
- About the artist
- Suravaram Pratapa Reddy Telugu University
- From
- Mulugu district
- Code
- RC-521
