THE MULBERRY FOREST BECOMING OCEAN THE MULBERRY FOREST BECOMING OCEAN | Page 56

twenty sixteen ( 2016 ) consists of a square panel covered in layers of white gesso whose surface has been marked with a thinnam — a traditional jewelry tool used by goldsmiths . The indents vary depending on the inflection and angle with which the metal tip hits the lime gesso . These performative operations echo the artisanal and cultural traditions of the artist ’ s background ; even though gold is materially absent , it is nevertheless present as a metonymy .
With her process-oriented works that follow a series of formal and structural tropes — white monochrome , seriality of the gesture , semi-mechanical process , reliance on the grid — Meppayil inscribes a local and traditional practice in the heart of modernist paradigms : “ The panel filled with tool marks was the abstraction of the tapping sound of the tool . It was interesting to discover that some of the motifs of the tools were related to basic geometric abstract forms .”
Detail : Prabhavathi Meppayil , twenty sixteen , 2016 , thinnam on gesso panel , 60,9 x 60,9 cm ( PRM 011 )
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