Smitha M Babu: A Choreography in Deep Green: D53 Defence Colony, New Delhi

Amid arboreal thickets of moss and pistachio green, pale skies swirl. The clouds, part amoeboid, part spectral, flatten into shapes resembling water bodies as much as sky. Woven into the landscape are groups of mostly sari-clad women holding hands and dancing, while the occasional man donning a mundu passes by, carrying fish, tools, or even balloons. Their choreographies are light-footed and ecstatic, as self-consciousness dissolves into a spirited connection between body, landscape and a transcendent passage of time. A first encounter with paintings by Kerala-based contemporary artist Smitha M. Babu reveals borderless, irregularly shaped frames that mimic the fluidity between land and sea. Within them, narrative patterns unfold through movement and rhythm, visually drawing on mythical traditions to articulate a collective memory under threat of transformation. Babu invokes a vision of womanhood and community within Kerala’s unbounded pastoral landscapes, where matriarchal lineages, women-led labour and ecological connection inform the complex inheritance of local culture. Her paintings are composed in a shallow perspective that remains curiously distant no matter how close one gets, as if greater proximity might disturb what is unfolding within the scene.