Tom Vattakuzhy’s Mumbai exhibition follows the feeling a story leaves behind

It often begins with a story that refuses to stay put. You finish reading, close the book, and yet something lingers, a mood, a flicker of recognition, a sense that the real weight of it never quite made it onto the page. That after-effect, elusive and faintly insistent, is where Tom Vattakuzhy begins.

Words give way to something harder to name at Tom Vattakuzhy’ new art show

Opening in Mumbai this May, Where Words End gathers a series the artist calls “story paintings,” though the term feels deliberately unstable. These works do not follow the arc of a plot or settle into illustration. They circle the residue of narrative, the part that slips past language and settles somewhere less precise. The exhibition frames this impulse clearly, noting that it stems from “a simple but insistent premise: that there are experiences which cannot be carried by language, and that painting begins precisely there.”

Tom’s own path makes that shift legible. His early work as an illustrator required a kind of visual obedience, images that clarified and accompanied text. The paintings here move at a different tempo. They hold back from explanation, allowing scenes to remain open-ended. Figures appear mid-gesture or mid-thought, as though caught between decisions. Rooms feel occupied by more than their visible elements. Time gathers in these spaces, thickening rather than moving forward.

The source material, often literary, operates less as subject and more as a point of departure. “Each story painting is an inner journey of the artist that begins where words come to an end,” Tom explains, describing a process guided by memory and sensation rather than narrative fidelity. What emerges carries traces of the original text without being anchored to it, allowing the image to develop its own internal logic.

There are recognisable figures within these works, though they resist easy categorisation. The artist speaks of drawing from “the ordinary, the oppressive, the vulnerable and the marginalised,” placing them within a charged but indeterminate space. Their presence suggests a social world without resolving into commentary, leaving the viewer to navigate the emotional terrain on their own terms.

Spending time with these paintings involves a subtle shift in attention. They do not offer themselves up quickly. Instead, they accumulate meaning slowly, asking the viewer to remain with what cannot be fully articulated. In that lingering, Tom locates a different kind of storytelling, one that begins after words have already done their work.

What: Where Words End story paintings by Tom Vattakuzhy

When: May 3 – 17, 2026 | 11 am to 7 pm

Where: ICIA Gallery, Kalaghoda, Mumbai

For more updates, join/follow our WhatsApp, Telegram and YouTube channels.