Yusuf Arakkal retrospective showcases the artist’s journey over four decades
The Hindu
Yusuf Arakkal retrospective at Durbar Hall Art Centre showcases 40 years of impactful artistry and creativity.
As one steps into the white-walled, high-ceilinged hall on the first floor of the Durbar Hall Art Centre, the Last Supper I at the far end screams ‘look at me’ and ‘keep looking at me.’ It is very hard to take one’s eyes off the six-feet-by-eight-feet oil on canvas painting.
Paintings from the late Yusuf Arakkal’s Christ series are on display on all the walls. If The Pieta, Gethsemane Prayer, The Prayer, The Baptism induce a sense of peace, The Crucifixion, The Resurrection and Crucifixion and Resurrection are moving. While some of the works in the series mark a departure from the conventional imagery (Caucasian) with a Christ with marked Afro-Asian features, some of the works veer toward the conventional.
Celebration of Solitude and Humanity, as a retrospective ought to, is a comprehensive look at not just Arakkal, the artist, but also his preoccupations as a human being — it is an intersectionality of aspects that shaped his sensibility. We get to travel with him, as he evolves in his practice and finds his individualistic, artistic idioms.
The works span 40-odd years from the 1980s to his demise in 2016, marking his creative trajectory. By no means diminutive in size, imagination, creativity or execution, the show is, ‘wow-inspiring’.
An introductory note informs us of Arakkal’s evolution as an artist. It tells us how despite an early bent towards abstraction, he went on to use figures as his primary mode of expression. Abstract as some of the works are, look carefully and one sees more.
The retrospective was first mounted at Bengaluru in 2022, after what Sara Arakkal, Arakkal’s wife, art curator and dealer says, “This is a major show for me. A lot of preparation and studying on how to put together a retrospective. A year’s worth of planning went into it. We were, after all, revisiting almost 50 years of Yusuf’s works.”
This was also a way of showing works that were ‘stuck at home’. Like the current show, the Bengaluru showcase put on display his entire oeuvre (excluding those in private collections) be it paintings or sculptures wrought in a variety of media such as copper, steel, aluminium, and terracotta.
