An eminent sculptor in Kerala has declined a civilian honour announced by the Left Democratic Front government alleging the authorities have spoiled the views of some of his sculptures, including one that recently entered the Guinness World Records.
Kanayi Kunhiraman had been named for the first ever Kerala Shri awards to mark Kerala Piravi on November 1, the anniversary of the day in 1956 when the state was created.
“An award is good, but it’s not a solution to everything,” the Kasaragod-based sculptor told reporters on Tuesday.
Kunhiraman has accused the government of spoiling the views of his Sagara Kanyaka (mermaid) installation in Shankumugham, which recently entered the Guinness World Records as the largest “merperson sculpture”, a giant conch in Veli Tourist Village and an artistically landscaped park with several sculptures on the Payyambalam beach in Kannur. Kunhiraman had done all three free of charge in the previous century. Shankumugham and Veli Tourist Village are in Thiruvananthapuram.
While the state tourism department installed a phased-out Mi-8 helicopter of the air force bang in front of the mermaid sculpture more than a year ago, it has allowed constructions around the Veli sculpture and the Payyambalam beach that have obscured the view of Kunhiraman’s artworks. All these obstructions happened during the tenure of the previous LDF government (2016-21),
The 25ft high and 87ft long mermaid sculpture has been a huge tourist attraction. Asked by the Kerala Tourism Department Corporation in 1990 to do it, Kunhiraman spent several years completing the concrete structure, built on a steel wire frame.
“The government installed a helicopter messing up the whole area and covering my sculpture. It was then tourism minister Kadakampally Surendran who did that,” Kunhiraman said.
“I had complained to him (Surendran) and the chief minister (Pinarayi Vijayan). The chief minister promised corrective action, but nothing has been done so far. How can I accept an award amid all this? All I want is for the government to take corrective action.”
Several artists had protested demanding the removal of the helicopter.
“There was a time nobody dared visit Veli since it was a den of antisocial elements. The local people became the biggest beneficiaries once the tourist village came up,” Kunhiraman said.
“The local people have told me they see the project as a godsend and that shopkeepers and others earn their livelihood because of Veli. But the tourism minister (Surendran) spoiled the place by building several structures there.”
Kunhiraman recalled how former chief minister E.K. Nayanar of the CPM (who governed the state intermittently in the 1980s and 1990s) had asked him to develop a Veli-like project on the Payyambalam beach in his hometown of Kannur.
“I designed the park with several artworks including the (famous) ‘mother and child’ sculpture on a 3-acre parcel of land near the Payyambalam beach. But today, it is spoiled,” he said, alluding to a tall tower that obstructs the view.
Surendran, now just an MLA, did not respond to calls from this newspaper. The Kerala government has not yet commented on Kunhiraman’s allegations.
The state government has instituted the Kerala Jyoti, Kerala Prabha and Kerala Shri awards from this year to honour people who have excelled in various fields. Kunhiraman alone has refused his award.
Large sculptures have been Kunhiraman’s forte, but he has had to face obstacles while creating some of them. The district collector had stopped the work on the mermaid citing objections from people who found it too risqué. But then chief minister K. Karunakaran of the Congress overruled the collector.
Kunhiraman had earlier faced objections to his 30ft tall Yakshi, a sculpture of a woman seated in the buff, created in the late 1960s at Malampuzha Dam in Palakkad. The woman who modelled for Yakshi, Nafeesa aka Nabeesumma, passed away in October 2020.
