KMB-2025: Indu Antony’s installation questions patriarchal values and expectations

Kochi / February 25, 2026

Kochi, Feb 25: Artist Indu Antony’s ‘I Brought Her Up Like Gold (2021)’, a deeply personal and conceptually layered installation, is on display at the KM Building, Calvathy Road, Fort Kochi, questioning in the same breath patriarchal devotion and its unreasonable expectations and disappointments.

The installation is part of the collateral exhibition ‘Like Gold’, curated by Murtaza Vali for the Rizq Art Initiative.

In her artwork, Antony noted that the idea began with an intuitive reflection on the commonly used expression. “From a young age, you hear people saying things like ‘brought up like gold.’ I’ve been reflecting on what that means to me and what people are actually saying when they use it. The thought process began there,” she said.

Developed over two to three years, the work evolved through an extended period of contemplation and experimentation. Antony explained that much of the process involved trial and technical refinement.

“There is always a long trial phase—working with paper, testing the contrast of a cyanotype negative, correcting alignments. You keep trying until there’s a moment where you feel butterflies in your stomach and realize, ‘This really works.’ That’s when it has taken the shape you intended,” she said.

Antony also described maintaining a personal “material library,” collecting objects intuitively without immediate certainty of their purpose. Discarded jewellery boxes eventually became central to translating her reflections into tangible form. “I kept thinking about how to bring my thought processes into these boxes. That’s how this project came about,” she said.

Curator Murtaza Vali notes, “The title of Indu Antony’s I Brought Her Up Like Gold (2021) — from which the exhibition’s title is excerpted — is a common Malayalam expression which speaks to the tender yet often excessive affection that parents lavish on a child.”

Expounding on it, he said, “It carries a double meaning, encompassing notions of devotion, support, and opportunity, but also of unreasonable expectations and inevitable disappointments.”

Describing the work’s emotional depth, Vali added, “Antony’s deeply personal work is a feminist ritual of catharsis, shedding off the burden of unfair parental and patriarchal projections and releasing the trauma of being brought up like gold.”

Antony also expressed appreciation for the deeply personal connections viewers have formed with the work. “I don’t usually ask people what they think because everyone should have their own thoughts about it. I can’t control what a person feels. But many people have written to me saying they really connected with it. Someone told me they ‘felt seen.’ Another person even got ‘Ponnu Pole Valarthiyaval’ tattooed and sent me a photo. For me, that was amazing,” she noted.

Reflecting on the invitation to present the work at the Biennale, Antony said the curator was clear in his intention to feature the piece prominently. “He was so impressed by it that he decided to name the show after my work. I thought that was a very beautiful thing for him to do,” she added.

ENDS

 

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