The open space at Cabral Yard in Fort Kochi had been completely claimed by trees, creepers, weeds, and mosquitoes when artist Valsan Koorma Kolleri arrived. In the space of three months, the artist converted the yard into a creative space that invites people into a unique conversation, while keeping a lot of the foliage still intact.
“Usually, I take space that no one wants — and work in it,” says Kolleri, who was born at Pattiam off Kannur and studied at ENSBA in Paris and the Government College of Fine Arts, Chennai. The yard, one of the venues for the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2014, now features Kolleri’s work ‘How Goes the Enemy.’ The “enemy” is time, says the 61-year-old sculptor.
A tall and tapering pillar-like structure close to the entry gate accommodates next to it a sculpture of a legs-up man with his head touching a largely oval platform. “Think reverse,” announces the artist, effectively protesting against “a straitjacketed mindset we have, courtesy the caged way we are all brought up”.
One side of the base features a pyramid dug downward, which the artist says “we will fill with water”. Otherwise, the plane follows the same principle as the sundial, adds Kolleri. The slight upward slant his sculpture’s base takes measures 10 degrees, which is roughly the longitude running along Kochi.
‘Not a clock’
“The structure is not a clock, but a device to simulate time’s movements,” he notes, pointing out that its diameter is 24 feet — the number representing the time earth takes to complete one rotation of the sun.
Helping Kolleri in the task of working among the foliage of Cabral yard was a team of masons of Shilpapaddiam art school he established in Pattiam, besides ‘Clayclub’, a collective of young architects based out of Ahmedabad, according to a press release.
The sculpture employs very little cement, with laterite stones from North Malabar forming the structures of the art work. At the venue, the artist has raised an ‘anthill theatre’ for small cultural get-togethers that punctuate his series of art workshops.
In three months’ time, when the Biennale goes on, Kolleri’s laterite and mud surfaces could very well erode in Kochi’s salty air and frequent rains. “That will add to the beauty of the installation,” says the artist.
