Unnikrishnan C

Unnikrishnan is a contemporary artist who graduated from the Government College of Fine Arts, Thrissur. His widely exhibited across major national and international platforms, including the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2013), Sharjah Biennale 12 (2015), the solo exhibition Unraveling Dissonances at Blum & Co., Zug (2018), and Lokame Tharavadu, Alappuzha (2021). His works were also presented at Srishti Art Gallery in 2024 and 2025.

 

His terracotta sculpture series, ‘Embodied Silence’ centers on a single, roughly molded brick, shaped to suggest human torsos. Placed alongside these fragmented forms are carefully rendered sculptures of quotidian objects- a bottle, a measuring vessel, a jackfruit, a hammer, dried fish, etc. In a sense, this work is an act of archival engagement-a distressed memorial to the unregistered multitudes whose labour and sacrifice literally built our urban landscapes. Each torso, formed from the very material of construction, embodies those anonymous workers; their facelessness signifies their erasure from authorized history.

 

Unnikrishnan deliberately engages with a profound art historical lineage: the torso fragment. In Indian pre-modern sculpture, the fragmented body often suggests both presence and transcendence. Here, that tradition is inverted to speak of a different kind of sacred-the sanctity of marginalised lives. The torso asserts an unidentitical, but a physical witness to existence, while its incompleteness mourns the lost stories. Through this quiet, resilient material, the artist becomes an archaeologist of the present, exhuming the marginalised past that forms our foundation.