Bringing brushstrokes into the battle against breast cancer Premium

This initiative uses the Kerala mural art form to demonstrate self-breast examination techniques

Art has therapeutic powers. An initiative by Apollo Cancer Centre saw artists, cancer survivors and experts from the medical fraternity come together to spread awareness on breast cancer. Using the Kerala mural art form, the eight steps of breast self-examination have been depicted on separate canvases.

In September this year, Apollo Cancer Centre reached out to MeMeraki, a Delhi-based collective of traditional artists with the theme of self-breast examination. Yosha Gupta, founder of MeMeraki, got artists to work on the theme. Apollo approved of the samples submitted by Adarsh A, a mural artist from Thiruvananthapuram, in Kerala.

“Apollo reached out to us as they wanted to use traditional art to create awareness about breast cancer because typical imagery for self-breast examination is either textbook imagery or graphic design, which doesn’t evoke an emotional reaction. Kerala mural art is a graceful art form where the body is shown fluidly and the colours are vibrant. It was a good fit since we need to be able to show movement while portraying the techniques of self-breast examination,” says Yosha.

“We presented a set of 50 sketches to Apollo. Once they decided on us, there was a bit of back and forth to get the depiction of the procedure accurately,” says Adarsh, who has been a part of the MeMeraki collective from its inception.

Although Adarsh was the master artist who ideated the imagery to be used in the canvases, a team of mural artists followed his template and design to recreate those eight canvases in Chennai, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Delhi as well. “We documented the process from the beginning and sent it to all the participating traditional artists to avoid errors in depicting the technique,” he adds.

Adarsh says it took him about a month to create the basic sketches and another to finalise them using acrylic colour on canvas. The other mural artists who recreated these eight steps in other cities were Jiju Lal, Ramesh, Saji K T, Shyju T K, Athira K B and Vishnusreedhar K A.

The paintings have also been incorporated into a coffee table book titled ‘Chitra-sutra’, where each step has been presented in verse and prose. The figure in each of these steps has been named after a cancer survivor in a bid to generate interest and create awareness. A soft copy of the book will soon be available online.