Big Mama

Her next project also has issues of size. It’s of mammoth proportions — a mural for the T3 airport in Delhi,measuring 10×24 feet. Menon plans to take on this one as soon as her aching back permits her to do so. “This time,I have decided to make the government put a price on the work. After what happened to my murals in Kolkata and Hyderabad,I am not gifting any more public art to them,” says Menon,as a dark shadow falls across her face. “While the Kolkata mural,gifted to Esplanade station,was found with nails hammered in it,the one at the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) building in Hyderabad has disappeared altogether,” adds a disgruntled Menon.

On a more cheerful note,her large composition titled Thread Ceremony is going places. The work,a formal tableaux,characterised by Menon’s elongated figures,will travel to Aicon Art Gallery in New York to be a part of her first solo in the Big Apple. The show premiers on December 1.

“Unlike many young contemporary artists,I do my own work now and do not outsource to assistants. Every inch of this canvas is painted by me,” says Menon about the painting that depicts a young Brahmin boy with his parents at his thread ceremony. On either side of the canvas are male and female mendicants,with an aura of holy people who have appeared to bless the child.

The show will consist of the large triptych,smaller studies that led up to the big painting and previous works sourced from Menon’s American collectors. She also plans to host a sneak preview of it in the Capital at the end of October,before the works are packed off to New York. “I am excited since I have never shown in New York on this scale,” adds the artist,still hot on the trail of her other two murals.

“It was just a matter of chance that I wanted those two murals documented for my book,A View Through The Patina. When I sent the photographer to Esplanade and LIC building,he told me that he could not find either of the murals. I was shocked and immediately sent letters to Gopal Gandhi in Kolkata,who cracked the whip and managed to track down the Kolkata mural. It was hidden behind posters,handbills and other paintings. They had even driven large nails into my work,” says a distraught Menon. Gandhi was then the governor of West Bengal.

“Now I’m told they are restoring it,but such shoddy treatment has ruined my trust in the government and I will now record a price for the murals,even if the government only pays me an honorarium,” says the artist. The missing mural of Hyderabad that consists of 14 panels,where each panel is 6×4 feet,is yet to be tracked down.

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