Artist Statement

My work explores the ways we are confronted by a world that seems obscured to us. We are barricaded by a transparent layer. Understanding is in reach but still not attainable. Self-knowledge, political realities, corporate manipulation, all remains unrevealed. Words and images are hidden, mirror images of you become we. You are well aware what lies behind the curtain; it is part of your own memory. You can walk through it. It is always visible…you're only adding your own new layers, one at a time. That emotional grip is obscuring the space. Paint drips then it settles by its own weight…creating a web of bubbles making its own barrier within and around. I'm encouraging you to reveal your own image.

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 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, and a six month scholarship program at the Manhattan Graphics Center. In 2009, he was chosen to be one of six artists whose work and words were featured in a video and live presentation for the National Day of Listening at the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue. The interview material was archived at the Library of Congress.