How a research scholar’s curiosity about type designing led to a paper on Kerala’s vibrant hand-painted political graffiti

There is more to the election-related graffiti writing that pops up on walls every election season, says Neetha Joseph K, a doctoral scholar of the Department of Design at IIT Hyderabad. Her research and photo documentation of hand-painted political graffiti in Kerala, ‘The Visual Voices of Kerala’s Politics’, was part of the Student’s Biennale of the recently-concluded Kochi Muziris Biennale. 

The research is interesting because it offers insights into how styles change from one part of Kerala to the next and how it becomes a representation of local culture as well. She did not expect much to come out of the project, as part of the Biennale, but the curator, Chinar Shah, given her interest in documentary practices, was interested. “She is into archiving memory, memory studies, and archival research. She saw the potential in it,” explains Neetha about how her interpretation of her research paper, literally, found four walls at the Biennale.