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Kerala-based artist Mithra K reflects on her recent Transoceanic Worldings residency at Parramatta Artists Studios.
Transoceanic Worldings is a new international partnership and reciprocal residency exchange between Parramatta Artists Studios and Kochi-Muziris Biennale, one of South Asia’s leading contemporary art platforms. At the centre of this partnership is a reciprocal residency exchange, enabling artists from India and Western Sydney to work across both contexts. The program supports an Indian artist to undertake a residency at PAS, while a PAS artist or alumni will be hosted in Southern India in Kochi, fostering dialogue, research and long-term connection between the two regions. Supported by the Australian Government through the Centre for Australia–India Relations (CAIR) and the Australian Consulate-General in Chennai.
In conversation with independent writer, editor and teacher June Miskell
June Miskell: Can you share with us a specific moment – such as an encounter with a work of art or an individual – that first made you realise you wanted to become an artist?
Mithra K: I’ve been painting since childhood. I’m from the Calicut district in Kerala, in the south of India. I initially studied a Bachelor of Commerce at the Government College of Madappally, which is affiliated with Calicut University. When I was enrolled in my commerce course, I became more connected to the literature department on campus, the Malayalam department (Malayalam is the local language). There was a Malayalam professor who was a very well-known poet. I was part of a group of students who gathered after class to discuss literature and poetry, and the professor would recommend us fiction novels to read. Even then, I was making paintings as a parallel practice. I told the professor that I wanted to pursue art—maybe I wasn’t fitting in with the commerce department and he supported me. He introduced me to one of his friends who was an established contemporary artist in India, and I looked for entrance exams to study art. I had never gotten that kind of encouragement before—my family was not very supportive of me pursuing art because it will not guarantee any sort of job. My father was the only one who supported me and gave me confidence even though my family wanted me to pursue commerce. Art is more associated with a sort of “anarchic” lifestyle in Indian society.
JM: Take us behind the scenes into your creative process. How does a new work begin for you? What does that earliest stage of the process look like, before the work has necessarily taken any concrete form?
MK: When you are a painter, you have a certain way of observing things. When I see a pattern, visual, or colour that attracts me, I have this painterly urge to recreate it or experiment with the form differently. There is a kind of uncontrollable urgency that I want to create something. Of course, that’s intuition but once that happens, I then research more. If you wait too long or start thinking so critically about it, you might not develop the work further. Sometimes I begin with only a fragment of a visual or text and then I like to thread it with something else – it might remind me of a historical moment, an archive, a photograph, or a scene from a film. I’m always thinking about composition – how to transform something that you’ve seen into a painting.
Cinema is very painterly, it helps you to understand the visual languages of composition, lighting, and movement; how to use certain metaphors. I watch a lot of films, especially art films. There is the annual International Film Festival in Kerala and Experimenta, a biennial festival of experimental film in Bangalore where I live. There are also film clubs that have weekly screenings and screen experimental female directors, so I try to attend these with my friends. It inspires me to feel like you belong in this creative space, because I don’t go and visit exhibitions always. In Bangalore, there are very few galleries – most of the galleries are in Bombay and Delhi and it’s very far to go by train. So, watching cinema and engaging with old masters work – especially Mughal miniature painting – inspires me.
JM: In a previous interview, you noted being influenced by Mughal miniature painting. Can you elaborate on the histories of this tradition? When did you first encounter Mughal miniature painting?
MK: Mughal miniature painting is a significant part of Indian art history – it’s actually a section in our art history syllabus. During the Mughal Empire (between the 16th and mid-19th century in India), artists received a lot of recognition by the Mughal court. Mughal miniature paintings were influenced by Indian literature and were small-scale, very detailed compositions of everyday life that also served as book illustrations. It’s a very narrative-based or storytelling style of painting. So, I learned about the history of Mughal miniature painting from one of the lecturers whose classes were more experimental than conventional. We did workshops and prepared a paper observing an aspect of Mughal miniature painting. I found the figures were very similar to those depicted in my own work. Later, during my masters, I also did an internship under a traditional artist working with miniature painting. In my work, I don’t really replicate traditional techniques as it is, but I’m attempting to adopt the style into my own.
JM: I read that your “autobiographical paintings and sculptural installations bring together fictional and real-world characters in dream-like settings.” Looking at your work, we see allegories of dreams, fragmented journeys, and folkloric motifs. Can you highlight some of the experiences and/or stories you’re referencing in your work?
MK: I’m very interested in fiction—exploring archetypes from regional stories, myths, and folklores. I grew up listening to a lot of fantastical stories, especially from my late grandmother. In the series Phantom Phases, I draw from two important references: my grandmother’s hallucinatory stories whilst on her deathbed and the miniature illustrations from “The Wonders of Creation and the Oddities of Existence,” a 13th century Iranian manuscript on cosmography by Zakariya al-Qazwini. It was originally written in Arabic and later translated into Turkish and Persian. Each has a different version of the same book; I’m interested in the Persian version because the paintings are so beautiful.
In my work, I explore fantastical creatures, flora, and fauna in my paintings—what I like to call “fictional zoology.” I have been obsessed with snakes throughout my practice, and it connects to the “sacred groves” in the northern part of Kerala, which are patches of forest dedicated to the worship of pre-Hinduist deities such as serpents. I grew up seeing a lot of snakes around me and listening to a lot of stories and myths about snakes, especially from my grandmother. She used to say there were a kingdom of snakes living inside of the forest, a “king” snake with gems in its head, other snakes that could fly. As a child, I even went into the forest looking for the kingdom. Everyone in the village considered serpents as deities or goddesses, so no one ever harmed serpents as they believed serpents had the power of revenge. So, these beliefs in a way help the ecosystem because people don’t harm them; they live in harmony. I was able to stay at Agumbe Rainforest Research Station (ARRS)—a herpetology research centre in Karnataka—where they conduct research on king cobras and hold rescue and community education programs. Staying there transformed my understanding about snakes and I learned about how Agumbe people considered king cobras as a female goddess.
So, I’m usually interested in archetypes that have a sort of womanistic undercurrent and that I feel personally connected to. India is a very patriarchal society; there’s a huge denial of feminism. One of the archetypes I’m interested in is the mythological figure of Karaikkal Ammaiyar who I had discovered through the poetry of Tamil poet, Meena Kandasamy and her poetry collection, Ms Militancy (2010). That word itself—Ms Militancy—was so powerful for me, I referenced a fragment of that text in my work. In the introduction to her book, she described a lot of mythical women from the past, “furious women” who were betrayed by society or who took complete control of their autonomy as an individual. Karaikkal Ammaiyar was a 6th-century Shaiva poet saint who transformed into this ghoul figure, abandoning all patriarchal beauty standards. What I find interesting about Karaikkal Ammaiyar is that she walks upside down, which can be interpreted as seeing the world from a different perspective.
JM: I understand you are undertaking a residency with Parramatta Artists Studios (PAS) as part of a reciprocal exchange partnership with the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB). Can you tell us about the work you previously created for KMB in 2022?
MK: The series I did for the Biennale was titled Corrective Measures. One of the main references for the central painting in the series was the engraved illustrations of a 16th-century Dutch traveller, Jan Huygen van Linschoten—in particular, his illustration of Sati. Sati is a ritual practice in Hinduism (which was later abolished) where women had to voluntarily sacrifice their life once their husband dies. In the illustration you see a woman jumping into the fire and burning her body alive. I was attracted to his figuration of the female body—the gesture of her hands, the looseness of her clothing; there’s this notion of falling and submitting to that fall I really liked. I wanted to take that idea of the fall and recreate it in my work. I did a self-portrait where one figure is falling and the other figure looks away. I was thinking about a sort of self-contradiction. In a way, there is this conditioned patriarchal way of thinking and so you suppress yourself in a certain way even though you are aware that it is illogical. This is where the text “self-sabotage” that you can see in the work comes from.
I like to use text as well as popular images in my work as a kind of satire. You can see there are women depicted enjoying a bath in a pond here and I have taken these figures from images of women in holy bath. So, this concept of holy bath is related to Hinduism where women take baths in sacred rivers like the Ganges, Yamuna, and Kaveri. When you dip yourself in the river, all of your sins are gone. I cut out these figures and pasted them into this muddy water, similar to a swampland. I was drawn to the idea of swamplands because there’s a short story in Malayalam where swamplands were a metaphor to talk about unmarried women, since swamplands cannot be manipulated or cultivated; it has no fertility, it is a “wild” land, one that you cannot utilise and extract value out of.
JM: I’m curious to learn more about your residency with PAS. How has this experience expanded you as an artist? What you have been working on during your residency? And, compared to your previous works, if there are any new approaches or techniques you have been experimenting with in the studio?
MK: At PAS, I’m currently working on an extension of the Phantom Phases series, specifically the concept of the Waq Waq tree. One of the references is an illustration of the Waq Waq tree from al-Qazwini’s manuscript, but it has also been depicted in 17th century Mughal miniature painting as well. The Waq Waq tree is a fictional fantasy tree believed to have existed in a land called Waq Waq island, interpreted as a feminist utopian island ruled by women and other fantastical beings. I’m connecting this idea of the Waq Waq tree with the sacred grove concept I was talking about earlier as they are both spaces for the well-being of women and the protection of biodiversity. It’s a space of gathering, ecology, and community. In my home, the sacred grove has this particular Ayurvedic tree that has a lot of medicinal value. These sacred groves are dying in Kerala with infrastructure taking over, it’s an endangered tradition now.
In the studio, I have been experimenting with powdered pigments for the first time and I am planning on creating a floor drawing. It is an idea related to the sacred grove and the worship of serpents in Sarpam Thullal performance, a traditional ritual in Kerala. The Sarpam Thullal is performed by the Pulluvar community—they use organic powders to create a floor drawing that evokes the serpent gods. During the performance, they use instruments and song; the women go into a trance, moving like serpents on top of the floor drawing, swirling their hair and eventually erasing these drawings. So, I will use pigments, some of which I found at a South Asian market in Harris Park to create the floor drawing. I’ve made stencils emulating some of the floral patterns that are seen in Sarppakkalam performances. It’s been interesting to experiment with powders; it’s temporary and erasable, not something that will last for a long time like painting. It’s another layer of experience.