Colours of displacement

Binoy Varghese's "Home Transit" series seeks to bring out emotions of women who have been displaced from one situation into another.

Innocent, bewildered, some confident and others shy, eyes stare out of bright canvases. Set against nature at its colourful best "" lush green leaves and flaming orange trees "" the bright faces command your attention.

A common thread - of colour and gender weaves through them all. These are all women at different stages of their life "" girls, adolescents, middle-aged and old.

Artist Binoy Varghese stands quietly in a corner of Palette Art Gallery, almost invisible, but his eyes seek a reaction from the visitors to the gallery. After more than 10 years of art experience behind him, he's definitely not nervous and his work is already sold out.

He only seeks to know what visitors have to say of his new series. Titled "Home Transit", the series seeks to brings out women's confusion and their ability to put up a brave face, fight all odds and bounce back. Adaptation and defiance are the two other words that define the mood.

Seek him out, and he tells you what the theme means to him "Colours represent life, and hope, and the idea behind this series was to bring out the emotions of people who have been displaced from one situation into another".

That explains the bold portraits of women. "Women and children are the ones who are most affected by displacement. Be it because of terrorism, or plain migration, it is they who suffer the most. Yet, it is amazing how they take it all in their stride and bear the burden of change," he says.

As he says this, portrait of a young girl catches the eye. Set against the backdrop of lush green leaves that immediately remind you of Kerala, the girl has a mischievous glint in her eyes. Her olive skin glints to perfection and flowers in her hair give away her origin.

"This girl belongs to Pondicherry. I'd collected her photograph on one of my journeys," says Binoy. Just as he did for the others. For Varghese, photographs are his reference.

These could be the pictures that he has clicked on his travels or simply photographs from a newspaper. It could be an infant from somewhere in remote Kerala, a young girl from Tamil Nadu, a tribal from Andamans, a middle-aged woman with her child from Kashmir "" they all have their story to narrate.

His earlier works, too, have been in the same line "" photorealism. Varghese's first oeuvre was called "Embarkation" and brought out the stories of ethnic Asians whom he'd met during his travels abroad. "Here too, skin was the theme and the colour brown predominated," he says.

For his medium, Varghese prefers to stick to acrylic on canvas. According to him, the fact that it is not an easy medium to handle when playing with bright contrasts and shadows is perhaps what makes it challenging for him to work with.

While he enjoys the reputation of someone who is "technically sound" in the art market, his comfort level with the medium reflects clearly from the way he's been able to retain the play of light, freshness, and softness in the features of the images on his canvas.

As Varghese turns to attend to other visitors, he laughs off the references to Kerala "" "Perhaps, it's because I miss home ... and my mother." The exhibition is on at the Palette Art Gallery, New Delhi, till November 4.