The gallery opened with much fanfare at Cinnamon Life. Glasses clinked and hors d’oeuvre gulped as people cruised from canvas to canvas in the violin music. Putting up airs, the art pundits waved their hands around like high-society mimes amid flashing cameras.
But something in the room felt still. The parrots—dozens of them—stared back in silence. Not a hint of green, red, or yellow. Only grayscale.
The artist, Firi Rahman was earnest. Said he liked the challenge. “Firi grew up with parrots,” I overheard. “He rescued birds.” “The cages question the nature of confinement.” But none of it really landed—not that evening. So I took his number and promised a proper interview.
Come Monday, almost every major media outlet in town had done a story on Firi’s exhibition. I looked at my desk calendar and knew the deadline was closing.
Without much further adieu, I called the artist to unwrap the art. “Even though I have parrots , it took so long to take them as an inspiration to tell a story,” he said. Firi had painted wildlife before—mostly in the name of conservation. But these birds were different. These were personal.
It came about during the Covid-19 lockdown’s and Firi experiencing profound loss after the passing away of his father and brother. The gray birds captured in the stillness of time started making sense, but I wanted to press onward. “I was shut in for long, not being able to do anything. That’s the time I started observing things; parallels between the parrot and myself”. He said that fostering an injured bird made him reminisce about taking care of his sick father. Firi started seeing his little fidgets in the birds.
“What’s striking about parrots compared to other wildlife?” The artist said he was always fascinated by parrots, an affinity he developed thanks to his grandmother. “So when I’m drawing, I don’t need any references. But for other animals, I need to look at references to study”. Firi is attuned with the bird so much that he says painting parrots comes naturally.
But why paint birds in greyscale? Firi admit that as a self-taught artist, his keys are pretty limited. “But at the same time I explore different mediums like pencils and charcoal. Then it gets messy and then I move to pens and from there I combine pens and acrylics. He also realised the dark work moving from Enclosed (Firi’s previous series). The colours or the lack thereof, represents projections of himself. However, Firi says that his work could change in future as he journeys forward.
As a self-taught artist, we asked Firi about his work being celebrated. “Getting into the art world was very challenging. It’s great to be featured in Cinnamon Life, the museum exhibition at MMCA, internationally and the work I did for Lunuganga for the Bawa Trust. These are milestones for myself,” he said adding that while experiencing times of self-doubt, being featured makes his hard work worthwhile.
However, being able to share his work with the public, according to the artist adds value to his work. “It adds another stage for my life. Especially after so much hard work,” Firi says, adding that being featured alongside veteran artists is a privilege.
