10/05/2026
INDIA IN STYLE 25: KMB 2025-26 - ASPINWALL HOUSE - SMITHA M BABU
With a theatre career spanning over two decades, Smitha M Babu extends her pictorial practice into the performative space. For the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, she presents Pakkalam (2023-ongoing), a multidisciplinary project rooted in her lived experiences along the Ashtamudi Lake in Kollam, and in her close observations of the working-class life centred on the region's coir- making traditions. Integrating her watercolour works with live theatre, she expands the aesthetic boundaries of both mediums.Alongside nearly thirty paintings exhibited at Aspinwall House, Smitha and her four-member team stage a fifteen-minute performance over three days, set against the sound of Kollam's coir-weaving spaces. They use the raw materials of coir production, such as coconut husk, coir fibre, and the ratt machine, as props and instruments. Setting the background and cadence for her performance is the collation of sounds recorded from the banks of Ashtamudi Lake-the rhythm of the spinning wheel, the lapping of lake water around the coir sheds, and the clamour of workers. (Aswathy Gopalakrishnan)
Video: Kochi-Muziris Biennale
Paakkalam is a Malayalam word that refers to a weaving workspace. It’s also the title of artist Smitha M Babu’s performance, which extends from her paintings of the landscape by the lakes of Kollam, drawing from the lived experiences of the region's traditional coir-making community. Smita and her team performed at Aspinwall House on 13 and 14 December, bringing the air alive with movement, gestures, and vocals, alongside a visual and sound design created using raw materials of coir production, such as coconut husk, coir fibre, and the ratt machine, as props and instruments.
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INDIA IN STYLE: 100 DAYS OF ART IN THE TIME OF THE KOCHI-MUZIRIS BIENNALE 2025-26: https://indiainstyle.in/article/india-in-style-100-days-of-art-01
