Meet Poojitha Menon | Artist – Ceramics, Oils and Photomontage

We had the good fortune of connecting with Poojitha Menon and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Poojitha, what role has risk played in your life or career?

Born and brought up in India, I was constantly surrounded by India’s lush culture and artistic tapestry. My family home was designed meticulously by my late father, who was a major antique buff, who travelled to artisanal villages to source highly skilled craftsmen to custom panel doors and arches with carvings for our home. So, from an early age, I was taught to appreciate the mind-boggling carving skills of an Indian craftsman and in that process, I fell in love with India’s magnificent arts.

Art is something that naturally runs deep within me, I am from Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. Completed my studies in Tourism and Hotel Management, and later, I did a postgraduate diploma in Advertising & Communication. When I moved to Malaysia in 2002, the rich plethora of S.E Asian art and antiques opened a whole new meaning to appreciating age-old raw forms and details. I love concepts about the revival of old Asia and hope that through art, we can connect deeper to our roots and be more self-assured, less judgmental, and confidently proud of our various blends of Asian heritage and culture.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.

BADAN is an ongoing collection of semi-realistic figurative oil works, ceramic sculptures, and photomontages thematically related to current affairs; be it social, personal, or political, represented by both animal and human forms. I am a visual artist working with oils, photomontage, and clay materials to create ceramic sculptures and mixed media works of art.

Deeply in love with the clay medium, I find myself intuitive in my approach to clay and sculpture. I employ the typical techniques like coiling, slab work, pinching, etc whilst I explore expressions of curiosity, current affairs, and everyday elements with a whimsical and surrealistic feel.

Working with clay has enabled me to have a vital connection with Mother Earth even from the confines of my home studio. For me sculpting and playing with clay is a liberating experience as it allows me to draw inspiration not only from my surroundings but also from nature, sound, space, and movement.

I aspire to create interactive works of art that are functional, thoughtful, and fluid whilst retaining the rich rawness of working with bare hands and age-old human forms in the finished work. My work depicts human relationships and emotions juxtaposed against the shapes and forms. I try and employ that intangible silver line of thoughts and emotions as a metaphor for what we could’ve done differently if we had embraced the other side.

Getting into the art field has never been easy. It’s been very hard to find a footing in the mainstream art world, but if you love what you do, you’ll hold on, even if it is just by one big toe in the space.

Art transcends all ages. As long as it has a certain emotive story, art can motivate, inspire and transform yet fill gaps and have a social and emotive approach. If there’s anything that I have learned in this 15 year journey, it is to always maintain one’s authenticity and create works that truly comes from your soul. As a bonus, along the way if you can find somebody who believes in you, I feel you’ve made it!

Artist statements for some of my works –

1.

Daughters of Kabul
Medium – Stoneware ceramics
Year – 2021
Price on request

This work of mine, is an ode to a father and his dreams for his daughters, risking everything he has known, thus yet. It is also the story of a father who will put aside his daily bread to feed his daughters and cycle them miles into an obscure village, to the only girl’s school there. It is also the story of a father who redefines his daughter’s stand in an overwhelmingly stifled patriarchal society.
Each small sculpture represents a child, replete with its own emotion. It is for you to decide what the story is and how you string it along.

But remember, as you story tell, Daughters of Kabul, could very well be the story of both our fathers, and if you are a father, it could be your story too.

2.

Title – The Blue One
Year – 2021
Size – 5ft /6ft
Medium – mixed media
Price on request

Artist Statement –

This work comes at a pivotal juncture in my career, as I explore society’s hypocrisy about women and divinity; where religion is the largest money-making business and raising questions of knowledge and inquiry is seriously frowned upon.

Covid19 saw many people praying AND crying in fear- a large increase in female abuse in households, not just here in Malaysia but in other parts too, more so in India. This makes you question what then is a society that prays to a God, form, or even the formless all about? Are we truly the blind following the one-eyed?

For eons, India has boasted about her religion and spirituality but isn’t all that a farce when using religious images to sell items, dowry, female infanticide, subjugation of women all still exist?

The Blue One is a celebration of that female form as the primordial source of all creation and a play on the sleeping posture of the Indian deity, Maha Vishnu.

3.

Title – Talking Pillows
Year – 2022
Medium – Stoneware ceramics
Size – 12x 14x 5-inch

Price on request

Adding to the Pillow Talk series, this work talks about duality, dreams, fears, tears, and hope and the possible myriad of emotions one may experience before laying down to sleep. I wonder what secrets it would reveal if pillows could talk. Sometimes, your pillow is your favorite therapist, no?

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I’ll be seeing my sister after almost 2 1/2 years, very soon, and we plan to do many things around Malaysia. I’ll give you a quick list of a few places that we have in mind. Snorkeling in Redang island, visiting the old prehistoric cave hotels in Ipoh for their geothermal hot baths, food galore all over Malaysia, glamping in Jenda Baik, and of course GENTING along with art shows and musicals happening in the city.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?

Sometimes being a self-taught artist can create insecurities and confusion in your mind, this was true for me. One of the best things that has ever happened to me till now in my artistic career, happened about two and a half years ago, (which funnily was also when I was hit with the worst health crisis of my life) was when a local award-winning artist by the name of Mr. Stephen Menon, called me for a chat out of the blue and I subsequently joined his collective of Indian artists based in Malaysia, called ArtVoice. This call saved me, for now, I suddenly had a direction and a purpose. He has this amazing knack of maintaining an artist’s authenticity and integrity yet being able to help them hone their artistic skills. Sometimes all you need is one unbiased person to believe in you and he does.

Of all the people in my life, my husband Girish Ramachandran is my greatest support and my worst critic! He has seen me at my best and my worst but continues to uphold my crazy ambitious dreams and visions with love and kindness. There were many desperate times when I thought I was failing, but he pushed me through and I am still here today because of this one man’s faith in my talent when I kept doubting it. I am extremely blessed to have a phenomenally supportive family.

But, I fail, if I do not give myself some credit. You can have a hundred people supporting you, praising you, and helping you, but it can never work if you do not want it ever so badly. So I’d like to give myself, this version of me today, some credit for taking all my lessons and making them matter, and wanting something for myself and refusing to simply exist, even if I have to do it with my teeth-gritting and hair pulled apart!

Instagram: @poojitharavimenon

Facebook: Poojitha Ravi Menon

Other: email – poojitharavimenon@gmail.com