Jinson Abraham's latest exhibition in Thiruvananthapuram, titled 'Kollavarsham 1202: Munnē: Ippōzh: Ini,' arrives as more than a display of images. It is a deliberate act of historical recovery, using portraiture, fabric and visual sequencing to examine how clothing once operated as a marker of caste, class and cultural belonging. The exhibition draws from Abraham's Kollavarsham 1202 calendar project, alongside a small selection of additional portraits, to build a visual argument about memory, identity and the politics of visibility.
The show's central premise is deceptively simple: fashion has never been merely decorative. In the historical context Abraham invokes, dress signified status, access and social position, while also revealing the exclusions imposed on marginalised communities. By revisiting these codes through contemporary artistic language, the exhibition seeks to recreate a sense of historical presence for those whose lives were often omitted from formal records or flattened in mainstream visual culture.
Fabric As Archive
Abraham's work treats cloth as a document. The textures, drapes and styling in the images do not function only as aesthetic choices; they operate as evidence of a social order. In this reading, fabric becomes an archive of lived experience, carrying traces of labour, aspiration, restraint and resistance. The exhibition's title, which moves from "before" to "now" to "next," reinforces that temporal bridge, suggesting that the past is not sealed off but continues to shape present identities.
The calendar images, by their nature, invite repeated viewing and everyday circulation. That format gives the project a wider cultural reach than a conventional gallery series. Yet in the exhibition setting, the images are recontextualised, encouraging slower attention and deeper scrutiny. What may have first appeared as a visual celebration of dress becomes, on closer inspection, a study of how clothing encoded power relations and how those codes were internalised, contested or transformed over time.
Reclaiming Marginalised Presence
A significant strength of the exhibition lies in its insistence on presence. Rather than treating marginalised communities as abstract subjects of historical commentary, Abraham's portraits seek to restore a human dimension to the record. The work suggests that representation itself is political: who is pictured, how they are dressed, and in what visual grammar they are framed all determine whether history remembers them as active participants or as footnotes.
This approach aligns the exhibition with broader contemporary conversations in Indian art about archival recovery and counter-history. Across the country, artists have increasingly turned to portraiture, textile, found imagery and oral memory to challenge dominant narratives that privilege elite or official perspectives. Abraham's exhibition participates in that shift, but with a specific focus on the cultural language of dress in Kerala's historical imagination.
The result is an exhibition that is as analytical as it is aesthetic. It does not merely evoke nostalgia for an earlier era. Instead, it asks how the visual codes of the past continue to shape the present, and how art can intervene in the gaps left by incomplete archives. In doing so, it positions fashion as a site of historical inquiry rather than consumer display.
Time, Identity And Seeing
The exhibition's title structure underscores its conceptual ambition. 'Munnē' suggests what came before, 'Ippōzh' points to the present, and 'Ini' gestures toward what may come next. That temporal arc gives the show a reflective urgency. It implies that understanding the present requires confronting the visual and social histories that produced it, especially those involving communities pushed to the margins.
In Thiruvananthapuram, a city with deep cultural and institutional significance in Kerala, the exhibition also gains a local resonance. It speaks to the region's layered history of reform, representation and social change, while reminding viewers that visual culture has long been implicated in the making of identity. Abraham's use of portraits and fabric does not offer a single definitive reading. Instead, it opens a field of questions about memory, dignity and who gets to be seen.
At a time when cultural discourse is increasingly attentive to archives, identity and the politics of representation, 'Kollavarsham 1202: Munnē: Ippōzh: Ini' stands out for its quiet insistence that history lives in the details of dress, posture and image. The exhibition's achievement lies in making those details speak, and in turning fashion into a language of remembrance.