Radhika Rani’s exhibition in Thiruvananthapuram is a journey through the history of numerals

Radhika Rani looks at how different civilisations used numerals against the backdrop of historical developments

Mathematics, history and art. I B Radhika Rani’s painting exhibition, 1024, is a seamless blend of the three. The artiste has showcased 27 works that explore the evolution of numerals through the ages.

“I have always been fascinated by history. A numeral is a figure, symbol, or letter that stands for a number. It was primarily used to keep accounts than to make calculations. The same idea or concept had different expressions in different civilisations. Also, as I studied mathematics as part of my academics, I often thought about the formation of equations. It felt interesting to go back in time and learn more about all these. The study and research eventually led to certain findings, which I have portrayed in my art,” says Radhika, a civil engineer from Kollam.

The title of the exhibition, 1024, she says, stands for the number 1024, which in the binary system has the number 1 followed by 12 zeroes (10000000000). “I wanted a number that has zero in it since zero is now there in the numerical system of most civilisations,” she explains. The exhibition is primarily about how nine civilisations — Persian, Chinese, Inca, Indian, Greek, Roman, Babylonian, Egyptian and Mayan, used numerals.

There is a blend of concepts, symbols and figures as she uses the acrylic impasto technique to look at how historical developments led to the creation of numerals. The number 1024 is picturised in each painting in different scripts or styles.  

If the Persian has geometric figures and architectural elements such as girih tiles (a set of five tiles used to create geometric patterns in Islamic architecture), the one on Chinese civilisation has popular symbols from the culture (dragon, falcon etc), the concept of magic squares (a grid pattern in which the sum of the numbers in each column, row, and diagonal is 15) and progression, among others.

Can you record facts and figures with knots? Well, the Incas could. The early 15th century AD empire in pre-Columbian America used knotted strings called quipu or khipu to record facts. “Most of the information is numeric. A cluster of knots represented a digit. If it is a zero, there is no knot,” explains Radhika.

Coming to the Indian civilisation, among the various elements represented are Sulba Sutra, which is the geometry related to the construction of altars for the worship of fire, the idea of zero explained by mathematician Brahmagupta, the infinity series, the value of pi, and mathematical elements at Jantar Mantar.