Catalogue / Janani
See it on a wall
Shown at true size: 36 × 32 cm. About the size of an A3 sheet. The person is about 170 cm tall. Every work is shown whole, never cropped.
Janani
What holds us together
Old hands, a paper fan and a grip that never tightens
Brown paper, the colour of a parcel tied with string.
Two hands fold over each other, every crease drawn in black ink.
White catches the knuckles like late light on a window ledge.
Above them a small wheel of grey and silver waits for wind.
The grip is close but the fan is free to turn.
What it holds is lighter than the hands.
The work
Janani grew up in the Nilgiris and studied painting at Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath in Bengaluru. She draws almost always in pen. In this work two old hands close around the stick of a paper fan. For her the fan stands for a child's innocence. The hands hold it but do not control it. The drawing is the first moment in a bond she returns to across her works: childhood as a place of safety. She builds every fold of skin with repeated lines slowly.
In the artist’s words
“I was trying to understand how memories and emotions stay with us even when the actual moment is gone. I mainly used pen on paper because slowly building an image through repeated lines makes me spend a lot of time with the thought behind the work. 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
- Childhood and care
- Material
- Ink on paper
- Size
- 35.5 × 31.8 cm
- Year
- 2025
- About the artist
- Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath
- From
- Coonoor
- Code
- RC-8189
- @asethete_owl
Meet the artist
