Chennai-based Benitha Perciay's installations on Jesus Christ at the Pepper House, one of the venues of the ongoing art extravaganza Kochi Muziris Biennale, is getting encouraging response from visitors.
A little over a fortnight ago, an incensed visitor to the sea-facing heritage complex accosted Benitha about her portrayal of Christ without arms.
That triggered "one of the best conversations I have ever had about art", she recalls the episode which happened by her installation titled 'The Fires of Faith'.
A graduate from Madras College of Arts and Culture in Chennai where she lives, Benitha's work is inspired by the antique shops in Kochi's suburban Mattacherry which stock antique figurines-mostly Christian-dating from colonial times.
There, she restored to her specification a warehouse room, which contains two almost life-size statues of Jesus. One of them rides in on a figwood donkey, and here the figure of his mother Mary is worked in incense. This is to convey the "idea of the sweet smell of a mother"-and the apostles, among several other things.
Benitha has also displayed the old things she collected as part of the display in a side room of the venue at the Biennale, which is curated by renowned artist Jitish Kallat.
It is not the first time she has created sculptures where the absence of something can be disturbing. She had earlier made a pieta with Jesus not present in Mary's cuddling arms.
"Here the vacuum shows the pain of absence," said the Christian artist, who does not use imagery from other religions because "I do not know much about them".
Benitha's sculptures are made with natural materials: bark powder, frankincense, myrrh, dried herbs and spices.
So in the early days of the biennale which began on December 12, there was a fragrance that led visitors down to path along the Dutch-style Pepper House's central courtyard to where her work was displayed.
The fragility of incense and its capacity for constant change and rebirth turns her act of creating sculptures into a simultaneous act of mending and restoring, as if she was merely piecing together what had always existed. Over time, the fragrance will fade and the sculptures will transform and disintegrate with the local climate.
"But you will have the memories," says Benitha.
The second edition of biennale, which features 100 main works (under the curatorial title 'Whorled Explorations') by 94 artists from 30 countries, will conclude on March 29.
