AVINASH KARN

Born to a family of Madhubani painters in Ranti, a village in Bihar, artist Avinash Karn is the founder of Madhubani’s first art collective- “KACHNI-BHARNI ART GROUP”. His Madhubani paintings are aimed at changing the dynamics of this folk form that originated in the Mithila region in Bihar.

He has been practicing Madhubani Painting since very young age, as contributing in his family’s work by filling colors in the traditional motifs of trees, birds, flowers, images of gods. Later, he started painting on his own. As the years passed, Avinash went on to study fine arts (Sculpture) at the Benares Hindu University and increasingly found himself growing disenchanted with reproducing the same themes of Madhubani art.

While his aesthetic still adheres to the folk form, the paintings themselves are inspired by the world around him. Unlike the common Madhubani art—Avinash’s paintings use the Madhubani style to depict urban life, mostly in his cityscape paintings. His large canvas on Mumbai, depicts the city through the eyes of the artist in the traditional style but without compromising on the content of his observations. This work as one would see is not a touristy interpretation of the city of dreams. It is an honest and a clear picture of the places the artist came into contact with during his sojourn at Mumbai. Such unbiased visual depictions of a city could become part of a broader cultural narrative in future.

The 29-year-old has discarded traditions regular motifs, occasionally uses digital backgrounds for his paintings, as he likes to experiment with traditional elements with complete freedom.Raised in a household of many women, he realized early on the true basis of his art practices is Nature. He depicts women in his works more from an understanding of the inseparability of femininity and creation than that of a male gaze which reduces it to a mere sensorial interpretation of a group of women. He has been a witness to the miracle of birth and death, timely and untimely and it has instilled a kind of continuous narrative evident in most of his works.

He draws images of the female body, of women giving birth and in one painting, titled ‘Invitation’, he endows a phallus with a vagina. In traditional Madhubani art, the narratives are often conservative in nature and stick to strict, socially accepted depictions with limited motifs and vocabulary. Hence as one goes through the whole works by the artist, one finds a fork in the road of his art practice. Without any sense of dichotomy, the artist reveals his exploratory side in some of his ink on paper works where the simplicity of the Madhubani line is used to portray nude figures. These figures overlap and form layered narratives, which could be erotic or sensual as per the artist’s directive, yet, the forms recognizable as Madhubani, seem liberated and free. This artistic license taken has not met with complete acceptance among the traditional Madhubani painters and he reveals that it is quite a divergent step taken in a different direction. While this does not hamper his visual language as a Madhubani painter, it liberates the artist in him to experiment on possible synergetic visual amalgamations.

The artist is working freelance in his studio in Varanasi. He was awarded with Young Artist Scholarship by Ministry of Culture, India. His works has been exhibited in several galleries and museums and collected worldwide. In April, 2019, he was invited to an International Fumetto Comic Festival in Switzerland where he gave talks, workshops and exhibited with other international contemporary artists. In 2020, His works were shown in India Art Fair, New Delhi and featured in their official press releases.