The Family Portrait

 Endowed with a striking sensibility, Siji Krishnan´s highly sophisticated watercolour paintings yield detailed scenarios evolving around the single human being and the intricate network of relationships in which it is embedded. The artist´s exquisitely elaborated depictions comprise arrangements in which figures are positioned like a set of actors on a theatre stage. Such panoramic displays often extend across large-scale formats measuring up to nearly 4 meters. The presentation of figures unfolds like an expansive theatrum mundi, in which diversity is put on show and exemplified. 

Krishnan´s approach proves to be universal. Departing from childhood memories as a source of inspiration, Krishnan, who grew up in the countryside, revives earliest sensual impressions, like the sounds of village life and the fragrance of flowers, converting remote sensations into pictorial motifs and themes. She uses her personal knowledge to reveal common human behaviour and interdependence. A very personal and emotional situation involved the death of her father in 2008. While previous works were centered on the intimate togetherness of father and daughter, which she has varied over and over in the past, Krishnan´s expanded self-portraits now feature larger groups such as a class of schoolchildren, families, or even an assembly of “freaks”. The members of each group are joined by a common trait, such as likeness of age or educational level, genealogical ties, or the shared burden of disability, respectively. 

The scenarios presented in several portraits dedicated to the family are manifestations of subjective remembrances that Krishnan tries to capture, oscillating between consciousness and unconsciousness. Rendered by processes of retrospection, her subjects are placed in rural settings that are reminiscent of her native village. They are united in lively get-togethers of different generations, with representatives of infancy, youth, adulthood and old age. Each family member is characterized through singular props, bearing distinct attributes of a trade or occupation. All are engaged in particular activities, often involving others, so that smaller entities within the whole arrangement can be discerned. 

In contemplating the plural array of figures and their affairs, the viewer witnesses a demonstration of phases of transition and transformation, intrinsic to life in the passage of time. These varying stages of development are complemented by a vast account of possible positions and roles that every individual might assume within the course of life and the structures of family and society he or she belongs to: husband, wife, father, mother, brother, sister, grandfather, grandmother, uncle, aunt, but also outsider or social misfit. In Freaks, the shared feature is a certain irregularity affecting the bodily shape, which is, in turn, a symptom of otherness, of difference within a general system of classification and stratification. Krishnan based this group portrait on the early US horror movie 'Freaks' (1932), in which the characters were played by people working as carnival sideshow performers bearing real deformities. The plot centers on a conflict between normal people and freaks and is solved by an act of revenge in which the protagonists undergo change and grotesque transformation. 

Working with great delicacy and commitment to her subjects, Krishnan takes utmost care in exploring a rich variety of human forms and conditions, alternating between moments of isolation and those of dynamic interaction. Although they seem to be anchored in worldly existence and dedicated to mundane tasks, an otherworldly aura emanates from the figures, related to dreamlike apparitions or phantoms. A brooding glance comes from uniformly dark-rimmed eyes, the whites glowing strikingly. Due to their indefinite nature, they are presumably the souls of ancestors or spirits of the past joining the present, since Krishnan does not make a difference between reality and recollection. The featured individuals, characterized as inhabitants of Krishnan´s inner world, although transporting an aspect of cultural specificity, transcend the particular context and are symbolic of every man and every woman. Krishnan´s world theatre is a touching performance of humankind, appearing to illustrate the famous lines from William Shakespeare: All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts… (As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII) 

A trademark of her craft, Krishnan uses sheets of rice paper of varying textures, which she layers until building up a thickness that absorbs the numerous washings with lighter and darker shades of watercolour or even tea. In her recent works, Krishnan employs a more reduced, monotone palette, achieving a greater overall transparency, endowing her images with an ethereal, light quality. The singular patina of the surface sometimes compares to organic material such as dried leaves but also bears the semblance of vintage textiles or ancient parchment rolls. An impression of timelessness is thus inscribed in the very medium of Krishnan´s painting, coming into being by means of a traditional technique, with which the artist creates a space for the subconscious to unfold, allowing the technique to adapt. Forms and figures seem to emerge from the shadowy depths of these carefully applied layers, fading in and out of the fibrous background. The structure of the surface is at times rough, and at others smooth, occasionally providing the initial impulse for a form. 

Krishnan´s recent series of Tree Portraits feature five different types of trees native to India (Mango, Jackfruit, Cashew nut, Coconut and Banyan), which are all conceived to stand out for their individuality and distinctiveness. Subjects of portraiture, the trees are protagonists in their own right, bearing a set of typical features not limited to recognizable botanic traits. Instead, Krishnan characterizes each tree through associated life forms, certain animal and human beings in its realm, inhabiting its foliage or embedded in its stem. A central life source, these trees provide nourishment, shelter and protection, thus establishing basic links as in a food chain or family tree. Like characters in a play, the role of each tree seems to unfold by means of the relationships performed, the connections and conflicts within the course of action. Krishnan thus seeks to capture the personality of the trees, defined by its natural habitat or surroundings and the networks of exchange in which it is involved. 

Krishnan´s cosmological configuration and her notion of wholeness and overall interrelatedness derive from her attachment to the past and deep connection to her childhood in rural India. Her visual vocabulary, firmly anchored in the spirit of communal life, becomes vividly explicit in her portraits of different “families” and certain species of “trees”, which might prove symbolic of a “family tree” reflecting Krishnan´s provenance, not just in terms of biological heritage but also with regard to spiritual formation. The psychological scope of memories and primal moments of sensory perception extends into actual experience and deeply affects Krishnan´s artistic method. All of Krishnan´s subjects are no realistic reproductions but rather are imbued with the artist´s intensely emotional approach and transformed by her imagination. Krishnan´s art reveals a chain of mutual involvement and influence, her inspiration shifting between levels of cognition and her method being one of permanent fluctuation between material and mental conditions, out of which the motifs come into being. As the artist acknowledges, creativity originates from a dynamic transition of states, manifesting the evolution of memories into fantasy, of real experience into dreams. 

Bettina Haiss, Cologne, 2016