Fields of Muziris
Memories, Myths, Traces
Year: 2016 - Present
Authors: Lijo John Mathew
Type: Mixed Media
Status: Ongoing
Exhibited: Annual Lalithakala Academy Exhibition, 2023
Team:
Lijo John Mathew, Nandagopal M
Truth is not always the whole story. It is plausibility that adds to the imagination. The fabled trade town Muziris is a land that exists partially in history and myth, recorded in seemingly disparate fragments through time. Fields of Muziris is a deeply personal effort to map its lost landscape and history that remains behind the scene; hidden under the everyday and the ordinary, unpunctuated by monuments. By accepting that the fragments of a city exist beyond its material remains, it presents an opportunity to elaborate an imagined landscape, opening up more perspectives; neither authoritarian nor mere documentation. New ways of reconstructing the past and questioning the existing paradigms in archaeology and architecture are unveiled through a speculative ‘Blankscape’. Clues in the present become an idiosyncratic vantage point in time.