Arun Mangala

05 Nov

Born in Wadakkanchery, Trissur, Arun Mangala is a young artist whose practice engages with the shifting interplay between intimacy and distance. His works often carry an undertone of darkness, with light serving as a metaphor for the dichotomy of human relationships – moments of closeness shadowed by separation, and distance hinting at the possibility of connection.

A graduate in Painting from the Government College of Fine Arts, Thrissur, Arun is currently pursuing his first year of MFA in Painting at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan. He was awarded the Kerala Lalithakala Akademi Scholarship for 2025–26. His exhibitions include And I Rise Again, Kerala State Exhibition 2025 at the Kerala Lalithakala Akademi, Ernakulam; Niracharthu, NI-fest 9 National Art Camp Exhibition 2024, Thrissur; Visualising the First Person (2023); the Chola Art Award Exhibition 2024 at Chola Art Gallery, Chalakudy and Making from the Scratches (2022), Thrissur. He also participated in Not What We Seem, the Degree Show 2025 at the Govt. College of Fine Arts, Thrissur, alongside several camps and workshops that further shaped his artistic sensibility. Arun’s practice reflects on the fragile line between proximity and distance, where the structures we create – both tangible and intangible – become defining forces. Boundaries such as walls, doors, fences, or even social codes, operate with paradoxical force: they shelter while they exclude, connect while they divide. In his works, this duality is made palpable, drawing viewers into the friction of human-made separations and opening space to imagine possibilities beyond them.