zakkir hussain

Born in 1970 in Kerala, Zakkir joined Samskara – an alternative cultural center Eramalloor in 1987 – 90, obtained BFA from the college of Fine Arts, Trivandrum (1994) and MFA from the faculty of Fine Arts, M.S.U., Baroda (1997). He is recipient of Lalit Kala Akademi Award (2000) and IFACS award (2001). He has exhibited at solo shows in Bangalore, Contemporary art gallery, Kochi., and at group shows at The Guild, Zen studio gallery among others.

What I want to explore is the possibility of an art practice within the bounds of a system in which reality is always a preordained subject that imposes itself on life. To expose the real hidden by this already ‘programmed’ reality, I take recourse to the conjoining of banal images (eg., trees, birds, male and female body parts, houses). What happens in truth is not a metamorphosis of these images- instead, I work with the visual chemistry effected by this grafting together of something like the stump of a tree, birds, house, partial human torso or some other conflicting image. These conjoined imageries are used deliberately to indicate some discarded, hidden situations and aspects of reality. The repetition of certain images [tree, bird] in my paintings may be read by a viewer generally as related to environmental issues, but this does not appear to be adequate to me. Ecological issues are related to the totality of life. The complexity of human life cannot be reduced to any singular aspect. I think that the problems that are reflected in the environment are part of the complexities in the social and inner aspects of man that he has to face. I use such images to mark the violence that man unleashes against man.