The Canvas That Remembers: Riju Nag and the Art of the Kulo
- Sumana Mukherjee
- Apr 15
- 3 min read
There is an object in most Bengali homes that has outlived everything around it — the kulo, the woven bamboo winnow, survivor of harvest seasons and auspicious ceremonies alike. It holds offerings on wedding mornings. It is handed down, not thrown away. And yet, for most of us, it has never been looked at.
Artist Riju Nag looked at it, and saw a canvas.
For Riju, this medium is already a message. The kulo is woven from bamboo by hands that rarely get credited. It carries the smell of grain and the memory of harvest. To paint on it is not merely to choose an unusual texture; it is to insist that the story and its setting belong together.
"I started painting on kulo just out of an experiment — to overcome the challenge of a rough surface, and to take advantage of its structure for my storytelling." - Riju Nag, Artist
The crisscross weave of the bamboo, visible beneath every layer of texture paste and acrylic and oil, does something no stretched linen can: it echoes the thatched roofs, the earthen floors, the layered grain of memory itself. The painting does not sit on a surface — it breathes with one.
THE WORKS
Medium : Texture paste, acrylic and oil on bamboo winnow
Long before screens, there was a grandmother and a flickering lamp and a circle of children who believed everything she said. Nag recreates this vanishing ritual — a grandmother as storyteller, the night sky as backdrop, the rustle of familiar words as universe. The texture of the winnow becomes the thatched roof, the earthen floor, the very fabric of that world. This is not a painting you observe. It is something remembered, held, passed down.
Medium : Oil and acrylic on bamboo kulo
An elderly woman in white stands with the quiet dignity of someone who has already survived the worst. Behind her, her son exists only as a portrait on the wall. A steady flame burns beside her like grief that has learned to live alongside you. The woven surface left visible beneath the figure is deliberate: it speaks of rural life, of nourishment, of the resilience that women like her have always quietly carried.
Medium : Texture paste, acrylic and oil on bamboo kulo
Morning light in a Bengali courtyard. A young girl before the tulsi, her hand-drawn alpana on the floor. Nag paints a moment that most families have lived — the passing of tradition from grandmother to grandchild, through proximity and devotion. The texture of the weave becomes part of the story, like walls that have witnessed generations of traditions.
Medium : Oil and acrylic on bamboo kulo
Between a kite held in small hands and a bag hung with adult weight lies the whole distance of a childhood. A road once walked barefoot now carries a heavier step — from village to city, from play to responsibility, from memory to survival. Painted on a vessel of rural life, it holds both what we carry forward and what we quietly leave behind.
Riju Nag has described this as a series — one that will grow along the stories of culture and heritage across the Indian subcontinent. Each new painting is also a small act of documentation: proof that something existed, that it mattered, that someone thought it worth the beauty of oil and pigment and hours of careful work on an unforgiving woven surface.
The kulo was always a vessel. It held grain. It held offerings. Now, in Nag's hands, it holds memory itself — which may be the most nourishing thing it has ever carried.
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