Pepper Garden

Paintings from my pepper garden in Kerala trace ancient trade routes from Kerala to the world. Pepper—once known as "black gold"—moved along these routes as a key commodity. Through these routes, Kerala became one of the early points of entry for European colonial expansion into India, followed by the Portuguese, Dutch, French, and British.

The name—Alennott—carries the trace of colonial and Christian influence within an Indian body. Art opened a way for me to engage with this history.

My practice traces a return along these same routes. When I exhibit paintings of my pepper garden in Europe, and carry pepper grown on my land, I am not repeating history but reconfiguring it.

What once moved as commodity returns as image and gesture. What was extracted becomes what is offered. The circulation remains, but its meaning shifts—from extraction to relation.

This work re-establishes a relation to history.