Baiju Parthan (1956), a painter, known as a pioneer of intermedia art in India. While elaborating the workings of a mysterious inner universe through his paintings, Parthan has combined his painterly concerns with his explorations of cyberspace to produce a series of provocative, richly textured installations.
A User's Manual takes the reader on a tour through the artist's diversely populated imagination. It maps Parthan's journey from his childhood in Kerala, through his student years in Goa, to his struggle to find a niche in the contemporary Indian art scenario. This book records Parthan's participation in the last years of the countercultural hippie scene, his encounters with spiritual teachings and shamanic lore, his experiments with form, and his engagement with media flows and alternative reality environments.
In the early 1980s, Parthan decided to quit painting. "I felt like a missionary for Western art," he explains. Instead, he enrolled in a course on comparative mythology at Bombay University, and began working as a writer and illustrator. He returned to painting in the early 1990s, when he began to explore the imagery of mandalas and Tibetan tangas. These traditional subjects were balanced by his reading in post-modern theorists. The latter enabled him to "recontextualize things from my immediate environment.
In 1995, Parthan began to study computers, learning hardware engineering, building his own machine, and creating programs. "I didn't want to be afraid of technology," says Parthan. "The machine has become the Other for humans, and it raises philosophical issues that we have to grapple with." Parthan is especially interested in the influence of technology on religious beliefs, the implications of genetic engineering, and the possibilities of post-humanism (i.e. the development of symbiotic relations between men and machines).
© 2018. All images are copyrighted © by Baiju Parthan. The use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained.
A User's Manual takes the reader on a tour through the artist's diversely populated imagination. It maps Parthan's journey from his childhood in Kerala, through his student years in Goa, to his struggle to find a niche in the contemporary Indian art scenario. This book records Parthan's participation in the last years of the countercultural hippie scene, his encounters with spiritual teachings and shamanic lore, his experiments with form, and his engagement with media flows and alternative reality environments.
In the early 1980s, Parthan decided to quit painting. "I felt like a missionary for Western art," he explains. Instead, he enrolled in a course on comparative mythology at Bombay University, and began working as a writer and illustrator. He returned to painting in the early 1990s, when he began to explore the imagery of mandalas and Tibetan tangas. These traditional subjects were balanced by his reading in post-modern theorists. The latter enabled him to "recontextualize things from my immediate environment.
In 1995, Parthan began to study computers, learning hardware engineering, building his own machine, and creating programs. "I didn't want to be afraid of technology," says Parthan. "The machine has become the Other for humans, and it raises philosophical issues that we have to grapple with." Parthan is especially interested in the influence of technology on religious beliefs, the implications of genetic engineering, and the possibilities of post-humanism (i.e. the development of symbiotic relations between men and machines).
© 2018. All images are copyrighted © by Baiju Parthan. The use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained.
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| Mr Baiju Parthan |
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