Rustic Ragas: Inner Melodies of Thota Vaikuntam

This book presents fifteen new dramatic paintings by Hyderabad-based artist Vaikuntam. The artist grew up in a village called Boorugupalli in the Karimnagar district within the Telangana heartland of Andhra Pradesh. The people of his village have often been depicted in his work, especially his portrayals of women – they could be his mother, an entertainer, a neighbour, a labourer, a gaze encountered in the teeming bazaar, even a family friend from his childhood. Vaikuntam’s Telangana folk meld the memory of his eyes and his fingers. They embody a unique world, of daily rites of life couched within an imaginative terrain. The monumentality of Vaikuntam’s figures in rich primary colours of the earth assume a mythical dimension, enhanced by the solidity of their execution in acrylic. They seem like demigods, not village folk-looming, tantalizing, almost unapproachable. Vaikuntam voice the collective yearning for a separate Telangana identity, beyond politics, beyond couched cultures. His rich palette and easily recognizable faces and figures have given his work acceptability; paintings that are strikingly modern without any allegiance to anything usually associated with modernity. In these huge canvases, Vaikuntam immortalizes his earthy icons for all time.