Artist Statement

My work is about my ongoing exploration of identity, displacement, and vulnerability. Reaching beyond your own confined space; confronting the loss of territorial markings and finding the way to reclaim them. That unsettling state of mind arises whether we are physically removed or just displaced by time; we are all longing to reconnect.

Bio

Anujan Ezhikode was born in India and studied at the Kerala Kalamandalam, Kerala State Academy of Arts, a school famous for its classical dance, music, and theater programs. He trained in, and afterwards taught, makeup and costume making for two classical theater arts. One of them Kutiyattam, the world’s oldest continuous theater form dating from the 10th century and the other Kathakali, a 17th century dance-drama.
After graduation, he joined the school staff and their repertory company and toured through out Europe, Asia, and the United States. In New York, he studied painting and printmaking at the Art Student’s League. He has won a John Hovannes Memorial Merit Scholarship, a “Diverse Forms Artists’ Projects: Regional Initiative” grant, a “Project Studio Program” residency at Painting Space 122 in New York City, an installation for the Mid-Manhattan Library’s Art in the Windows series, a six month scholarship program at the Manhattan Graphics Center and was one of eighteen artists selected for The Field, at the Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning.

His work has been exhibited at museums, galleries, universities, and libraries in the New York City Area including, the Islip Art Museum, Hammond Museum, The Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, The Permanent Mission of India to the UN, the Consulate General of India, the Asian American Arts Center, 440 Gallery, The Classroom at PS 122 Gallery, NYU 80 Washington Square East Galleries, St. John’s University, and at Manhattanville College.  Anujan is an exhibiting member of the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition.