Jolly Bird is a collaborative hand-bound artist book that I co-created with my fellow artists (Aparna Nori, Indu Antony & Krishanu Chatterjee) at our studio Kanike. The book is an intimate, insightful and deeply personal expression of what we felt, what we felt for during the dark days of the pandemic. The book presents within its leaves, photographs, drawings, prints, interjected by dark and comical headlines that were seen in the local newspapers during that period.
10.8 cm x 15.3 cm
132 pages
Hardbound, coptic stitched
Digitally printed pages
No. of editions: 50
A few months after we had come together as a collective (Kānike) at the end of 2019, we were hurled into the pandemic. While the collective came together based on mutual and artistic interests, the ensuing period of uncertainty made us question the sustainability of both the collective and the studio we had begun to nurture.
In the ensuing months it became clear that it was important to document the strange times we were going through, in our own individualistic way. The silhouettes of canines at night, the emptiness of apartment lobbies, the reassuring touch of a partner made us appreciate the often overlooked experiences of our everyday lives. The pandemic opened our eyes to them. We shared our thoughts, we wrote, we made images and drawings. We hemmed all that into a project, presenting in its leaves an intimate, insightful and deeply personal exploration.
We were quite numbed by the number of deaths that were being relayed over television screens and it did, of course, hurt beyond words when it was someone we knew. The passing away of SP Balasubramaniam became symbolic of the grief that had enveloped us and we decided to dedicate the book after a phrase he sings in one of his numbers. ‘Jolly Bird’ sounds like a celebration of a joyous occasion, but in fact is a post-it for us to look around and find pleasure in the simplest of things around us - lest they pass us by too quickly, like a jolly bird.
But we held on to the studio even during our bleakest and it paid off. It became the only space of reality for us, taking stock of each other’s physical and emotional health, nursing wounds while offering words of solace and silence as panacea. In between these moments, we coaxed ourselves to express what we felt, what we felt for, what we thought we felt - through photographs, words, drawings, prints and sewing interjected by dark and comical headlines in the local newspapers that wafted us by, offering an alternative commentary.