Wilson Malakkaran (b. 1985, Kerala) constructs paintings from paper—bakery bags, produce wrappings—materials already marked by the passage of time and previous uses. A practice Malakkaran has employed since childhood: he covered his schoolbooks with recycled paper, a gesture that united utility and care. A teaching passed down from his mother that became a foundational element of his artistic activity.

The materials he uses guide the work. The artist describes the encounter with them as combat: the paper never gives him what he wants; contaminated by oil, moisture, and use, each surface asserts its own materiality over the artist's intention. Acrylic and pigment accumulate in dense, architectural layers—transforming fragility into structure, refuse into luminous depth.

Color, an essential element in Malakkaran's work, operates as inherited knowledge. He paints by reinterpreting a familial wisdom: the chromatic vocabulary of his mother's sarees. His color emerges from textile traditions rooted in everyday life rather than from conventional formal instruction. This is pedagogy outside institutional frameworks—knowledge transmitted through domestic space, his mother's labor, and the visual language of adornment. The paintings radiate from within; the stratified surfaces of his works suggest what accumulates when attention is paid to what is usually considered waste and residual material.

His practice values repair over production. Following childhood teachings, for Malakkaran reuse constitutes creative labor. Value is generated outside canonical contemporary modes: what the market discards becomes, in the artist's hands, the foundation for his artistic process and assumes new meaning through practices rooted in scarcity and the creative potential of what has already circulated.