SHIBU ARAKKAL

Shibu Arakkal is a an award winning photo-artist who has garnered international respect for his conceptual photographic art and a unique philosophical viewpoint which unify a diverse range of works shown in over 50 exhibitions, spanning a career of nearly 25 years. His work embraces abstraction, minimalism and Zen philosophy, whilst merging analogue and digital photographic techniques of printmaking in a very unique and unconventional style. Every work articulates a depth of thought that is meant to resonate with the viewer and the artist’s conviction that his subject and he have found a way to converse through the medium of photography.

Arakkal is one of the few Indians to have been awarded the prestigious ‘Lorenzo il Magnifico’ Gold Prize in Digital Art for his work from ‘Constructing Life’ at the Florence Biennale 2013 in Italy.

In 2014, Arakkal coined the term ‘iPhonography’ – the medium of digital photography using the iPhone and the resultant photographs as ‘iPhonographs’. A hashtag that accounts for over 7.5 million posts today on Instagram alone. His creation of iPhonographic art is technologically experimental, even internationally, continually pushing the boundaries of cutting-edge image creation and printing techniques.

Arakkal has the heart of a painter and the mind of a photographer; which is evident in his work, leaving the viewer to navigate the complex lines of the seen and the unseen.

His works today are a part of private and institutional collections across India, China, Singapore, Australia, Italy and New York.