Drawing Room: Yogesh Ramkrishna on Manjunath Kamath’s mythical art

Spend a moment taking in artist B Manjunath Kamath’s Vikatonarva, a 12-foot-tall terracotta sculpture made in six parts. It comprises a grandiose figure, wearing an imposing headdress comprised of dozens of smaller heads arranged like grapes on a vine. And the figure itself seems to be standing atop two forms that seem like animals, except they don’t look like any creature we know. The whole sculpture is a bit of a puzzle – is the style Ancient Greek, Italian, Chinese or Indian? The name doesn’t help. Vikatonarva sounds like a mix of the Sanskrit words vikata (monstrous) and anarva (boundless). But Kamath says that he invented the name.