VIA encapsulates the duality of journey both as a physical movement across geographies and a metaphor for the ever-shifting nature of home. The title draws inspiration from colonial-era postal notations, echoing the themes of displacement, connection and passage that runs through the exhibition. Midhun’s paintings are deeply rooted in personal narratives, drawn from memories, emotions and imagined spaces that blend reality with fiction. At times, he incorporates archival materials, such as British-era postcards, painting over them to weave contemporary reflections into historical fragments. His work often leans toward semi-abstract compositions, where organic forms take precedence over rigid geometry. The use of primary colours, recurring motifs of fire, water, sky and fragmented imagery—landscapes, ships, body parts, flowers, houses, and maps—serve as visual anchors, embodying subconscious reflections and cultural transitions.
By layering rice paper, acrylic, gouache, and watercolour, Midhun creates textured surfaces that mirror the complexity of memory and the fragmented nature of identity. This process of layering and peeling away—of addition and erasure—becomes a metaphor for remembrance and loss, where traces of personal stories emerge like ghostly imprints. Central to his practice is the notion of home as a fluid and evolving concepts, shaped by history, memory and the ever-present movement of life. He is drawn to its inherent contradictions: home as both a place of belonging and estrangement, as a vessel of personal and collective history, and as a space marked by presence and absence. A key series within the exhibition, Travel Diaries to Home, explores the intersection of today's transnational migrations with broader historical trajectories. As part of this, Midhun created Marking and Making Maps: Searching for Homelands, an interactive installation shaped like a house, built from prints and cloth. Incorporating old maps, letters, and photographs—including a 1652 French map of Kerala—this evolving piece invites participants to inscribe their own definitions of home in their native languages. First exhibited in France, then Amsterdam and London, it gathers voices from diverse backgrounds, forming a collective archive of belonging.
VIA is a meditation on passage as a quiet revolution. Through fractured forms and luminous voids, the work suggests that identity is not static, but in a state of constant transformation—a testament to carrying one’s past, while stepping into the unknown. Rather than offering definitive answers, the exhibition invites reflections, presenting a universal map of becoming, traced through memory, movement and metamorphosis.
The exhibition’s journey across France, the Netherlands, England and India reflects a deeper historical resonance. These regions, once interconnected through trade and colonial histories, share a complex past with Kerala, a place shaped by centuries of cultural exchange. As his work travels through these places, it becomes part of this ongoing dialogue—retracing routes of movement, commerce, and migration. Some of the pieces are created during this journey, responding to the evolving contexts of the exhibition and the places it inhabits.
