How Vivek Vilasini approaches the notion of creating micro-worlds?

New Delhi based Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre presented an interesting group show of five contemporary artists, entitled ‘Surviving Sagas’ earlier this month – courtesy Ashna Gallery. Though the styles differ considerably, as in an aesthetic bouquet, when put together, they establish the areas of convergence of their concerned themes, which could create a macro narrative, in a way justifying the title of the show. Here is the gallery note on Vivek Vilasini:

The talented artist approaches the notion of creating micro-worlds as a form of cultural resistance through the revocation of old scripts on his painterly surface. These surfaces with fluorescent paints literally re-script the divested scripts from the language of Malayalam. He calls it as the ‘Glyphs in Tales’. These letters are the results of certain innovative minds who dared the hegemonic scriptural practices in the realm of publishing both in book form and in web form.

The script that the artist uses comes from the font set named Rachana, which literally meaning ‘writing’. By placing the script of a local language, which has lesser possibilities to capture the attention of the world, as a cultural symbol in order to oppose the hegemonic texts and their veracity, Vivek Vilasini imparts the idea of a micro structure that could challenge the predominant knowledge systems and historiography through the production of alternative knowledge systems and historiography through the implementation of a revised font set for the desk top as well as web publishing.

By investing the scripts with a new power and presence, he makes them the participants in a pageant or carnival where multi-cultural ideas are propagated in multi-linguistic modes. This is a world that the artist aspires to establish where parallel histories, subversive histories and the fringe histories get a say against and in relation with the hegemonic acts of making scriptures and cannons for the contemporary life.

In his digital images, one can find the linkages between his varied visual practices. He creates the tableaux of dominant images from art history by incorporating a new set of actors in completely local garbs. The same approach is visible in the production of micro worlds using script as bricks and mortar.

(Information courtesy: courtesy Ashna Gallery, New Delhi)