Jinson Abraham's latest exhibition, Kollavarsham 1202: Munnē: Ippōzh: Ini, places fabric at the centre of a larger argument about memory, identity and erasure. Presented in Thiruvananthapuram, the show brings together images from Abraham's Kollavarsham 1202 calendar along with a selection of portraits, using dress not merely as an aesthetic device but as a historical clue. In doing so, the exhibition asks viewers to consider how clothing once signalled caste, status, labour and belonging, and how those signs can be re-read in the present.
The exhibition is notable for its deliberate refusal to treat fashion as superficial. Instead, Abraham frames garments as cultural evidence, suggesting that the textures, drapes and visual codes of attire can reveal how communities were seen, classified and remembered. The title itself, spanning past, present and future, reinforces that approach. It positions the work as a temporal bridge: a reflection on what existed before, what survives now, and what may yet be reclaimed through art.
Fabric As Archive
At the heart of the exhibition is a visual method that treats fabric as an archive. Abraham's calendar images, which form the core of the display, are not presented as decorative illustrations alone. They are part of a broader inquiry into how fashion operated in earlier social contexts as a marker of cultural identity. By foregrounding clothing, the artist draws attention to the ways in which appearance was historically regulated and interpreted, particularly in relation to marginalised groups whose presence was often distorted or excluded from dominant narratives.
This approach gives the exhibition a documentary charge even when it remains firmly within the realm of art. The portraits extend that effect, offering faces and figures that resist anonymity. Rather than allowing history to flatten individuals into categories, Abraham's work appears to restore specificity, suggesting that representation itself can be a corrective to social invisibility. The result is an exhibition that is as much about historical recovery as it is about visual composition.
The setting in Thiruvananthapuram adds another layer of resonance. Kerala's cultural history has long been shaped by complex hierarchies of dress, ritual and public visibility, making the city a fitting site for a project that interrogates how identity was performed and perceived. Abraham's exhibition enters that conversation by asking what it means to look back at the past through the materials people wore, and what those materials can still tell contemporary audiences.
Reclaiming Marginalised Presence
The exhibition's deeper significance lies in its attempt to recreate, or at least reimagine, the historical presence of the marginalised. That is a difficult task, because the archive is often incomplete and official histories have frequently overlooked those at the edges of power. Abraham responds not by claiming certainty, but by building a visual language that acknowledges absence while refusing to accept erasure as final.
In that sense, Kollavarsham 1202: Munnē: Ippōzh: Ini functions as both artwork and intervention. It suggests that the past is not only preserved in documents and monuments, but also in the social meanings attached to everyday objects such as cloth, ornaments and attire. By reworking these elements into a contemporary exhibition, Abraham invites viewers to reconsider who gets represented in cultural memory and how that representation is constructed.
The show also reflects a broader trend in Indian contemporary art, where artists increasingly use portraiture, archival references and material culture to revisit histories that have been marginalised or simplified. Yet Abraham's project stands out for its focus on fashion as a historical language. Rather than treating dress as background detail, he makes it central to the story, implying that what people wore was inseparable from how they were read by society.
For audiences in Thiruvananthapuram, the exhibition offers more than visual appeal. It presents a layered meditation on time, social visibility and the politics of looking. By interlinking fabric and history, Abraham turns the gallery into a site of inquiry, where the act of seeing becomes an act of remembering. In a cultural moment increasingly attentive to questions of representation, Kollavarsham 1202: Munnē: Ippōzh: Ini argues that the textures of the past still matter — and that they may hold the key to understanding who was seen, who was not, and why.