K Benitha Perciyal is in the process of creating a living, breathing library. Only, these are books that one cannot read. The Chennai-based artist is carving books out of discarded Burma teak. She has a collection of over 700 of them, 400 of which are currently on display as part of the show Turning: On Field and Work at the Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa, and 100 at the ongoing Madras Art Weekend. “This is something I started working on around nine years ago,” says Benitha, of the project she calls Xenophora, named after carrier shells that keep attaching more shells to their body during their lifetime.
Each title is based on existing ones that Benitha has either read or come across. “My brother had a small library at our home in Tiruvannamalai,” she recalls, adding that she first started reading books from its shelves. “I started reading Che Guevara when I was in Class IX,” she adds, “I read a lot of books by the New Century Book House.” They are all there with her now, in wood.
“When old houses are demolished, the wood used in them is taken to timbre shops where they are either recycled or auctioned,” explains Benitha. What is left of wood from beams, for instance, particularly those that are crumbling away, are chopped into smaller blocks. To Benitha, who often visits such shops, these blocks appeared like books.
This observation stirred something in her, and she eventually started carving them to resemble books in the real sense. She engraved titles and author names as well. Many books from her collection are rare, old titles. There are books on the Indian Railways, Ajanta and Ellora caves, Indian medicine, and how Madras was formed, such as the eight-volume Hortus Malabaricus, a 17th Century Latin botanical treatise on the flora of the Malabar coast… “There are also new books for which I reached out to the authors to get their permission to engrave their names,” says Benitha.
She is crafting more every other day, and hopes to hold a show inside Chennai’s Madras Literary Society’s ancient library, known for its packed, ceiling-high shelves that have to be accessed with teetering ladders. This is the kind of library of wooden books that the artist ultimately wants to create.
Turning: On Field and Work is on till December 23, 11am to 8pm, at Serendipity Arts Festival, Ground Floor, Old GMC Building, Goa.
