At the Unshelving Memories art exhibition currently on at the College of Fine Arts (CFA), Thiruvananthapuram, 61 artists practising book art, a discipline where works are presented structurally as books, have come together. Each book varies in texture, concept, components and installation, showcasing ‘text, images, collages, or sculptural interventions, often defying established norms.’
Curated by Shijo Jacob, artist and Professor in Painting at CFA, Unshelving Memories brings together artists from across the country. Shijo says, “I have been working with the idea of books for some time. I have also done shows focusing on artist sketch books and clipboards,” highlighting the importance of books as a medium in preserving and conveying ‘the breadth of human experience.’
Shijo Jacob
| Photo Credit:
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
Building on this perspective, Shijo adds, “The exhibition is a mixture of reading, observing and feeling, unlike conventional art showcases where the artworks are observed from a distance.”
The installations include coffee table books, books with fabric pages, accordion books, and more — each exploring themes such as conflict, memory, gender, identity, and ecology, among others. The works use the idea of pages to offer layered observations on topics, without the limitations of a canvas.
An installation at Unshelving Memories
| Photo Credit:
Nainu Oommen
Touted as the first show in Kerala featuring book art, the exhibition took around three months of preparation, says Shijo. “Once we finalised on the display, we reached out to artists, who either prepared new installations for this exhibition or provided us with their existing work.”
An installation at Unshelving Memories
| Photo Credit:
Nainu Oommen
Radha Pandey’s work Marketid, a handmade artist book, portrays 15 years of her life spread across three countries. The different shades of blue represent evolving perceptions of skin colour, depicting the difficulties in blending into a foreign cultural setup.
Photographer Girish Gopinathan’s book, Erotica Marks, is a collection of photographs of erotic graffiti and inscriptions, captured across the country. The work equates these spots to contemporary caves, where messages are left, while looking at these scribbles as practices beyond vandalism.
Nimmy Melvin’s art book, made with wool, paper, thread, and natural elements, represents topographies interwoven with personal experiences.
Mahesh KS’ Tiffin Book and Shapeless, Formless as Water use mundane objects to represent something larger. In Tiffin Box, he treats each compartment of a traditional steel lunch box as a different page of the artwork, which further contains other artworks. Shapeless, Formless as Water is made of mixed media, with each page a transparent plastic covering filled with water and other components of a small artefact.
Nitasha Jain’s Men of Quality is a two-volume wooden book featuring stories of popular male figures such as Arunachalam Muruganantham (a social entrepreneur popularly known as Padman for inventing a low-cost sanitary pad-making machine), social reformer Raja Ram Mohan Roy, and philosopher Swami Dayanand Saraswati, engraved on the wooden pages.
Bhumij by Moutushi Chakraborty is a four-page accordion book made with banana skin paper pulp and is inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s embryonic paintings. The book represents a child in the womb and explores themes such as blood, labour and longing.
Other artists featured include Samit Das, Manesha Deva Sharma, Manoj Vyloor, Ravikumar Kashi and Venus Paull, among others.
Bringing together artists adept in different media came with challenges, says the curator. “Our biggest obstacle was ensuring the safety of the artwork because of its delicate nature. Another challenge we faced was displaying the works within the limited space and understanding how they must be exhibited,” says Shijo.
Unshelving Memories is on till March 15 at the College of Fine Arts (CFA), Thiruvananthapuram. Free entry. Time: 10am to 7pm
Published – March 10, 2026 05:00 pm IST
