Baiju Parthan

Born in 1956, Baiju completed his graduation in arts from Goa College of Art, University of Bombay. Baiju Parthan is an artist with a mythopoeic imagination. He has created a unique vocabulary based on the intriguing use of symbols and archaic imagery. A botanist by training and a cartoonist by experience, Baiju is also a scholar of Comparative Mythology and Philosophy. All these diverse elements have shaped Baiju’s inner world. His paintings express the numinous world of the primitive man, where the artist is the shaman, who through his ‘ceremonial art’ communes with the world of magic – perhaps black magic. Currently, Baiju is excited with the Dawkinian idea of the ‘meme’. He is dwelling at length on ideas of ‘formalised historiography’ versus the ‘information virus’. He believes, “Formalised history is essential as a kind of collective memory. … It is almost as though we have metabolised time and excreted history.” His emphasis obviously lies on the information virus which generates a collective memory, “more dynamic and real rather than static and residual.” Baiju continues to allude, question and engage. His works portray that mysterious trajectory.