Chithiraalayam is a museum and gallery space for the Popular Art tradition that originated in Kovilpatti, Tamil Nadu and grew into a language of vision, through which generations in South India imagined the divine.
Images from this tradition were once part of our everyday visual landscape. In calendars, print-sheets displayed by temples and tucked away in the corners of pooja rooms, they were part of regular devotional engagement, so ubiquitous and familiar that we had stopped questioning their origins.
Bringing these images together was an effort in recollection. We wanted the collection to represent not just the breadth of artists that worked in this medium, but also the individual voices and details that made each image an original. C. Kondiahraju was considered a singular force behind the evolution of this style, and a guiding presence for those who worked in it. Here, his work anchors the collection, flanked by pieces by MU. Ramalingam, T.S. Subbiah and many others, whose work was a part of the collective visual language we grew up with.
In their paintings, the processional imagery of temples was rendered in forms that could travel into homes, becoming accessible, recognisable and personal.
The dispersal of these paintings over time into private collections, storage and even oblivion, means that the work of collecting these originals again took years of seeking, identification and careful acquisition, through multiple sources. What exists at Chithiraalayam now is not just a collection but an archive that continues to be built upon.
Works presented at Chithiraalayam are recreated with care on silk, detailed by hand and framed on teakwood boards. The process is not one that tries to replace or substitute the original, it is one that extends its presence.
These are not images that we display. These are forms that have been lived in, that have been part of rituals and memory.
At Chithiraalayam, we offer them again, not as nostalgic prints of the past but as works to be preserved, to live with and to pass on to future generations
