It looks like a painting or a pencil drawing from afar. But go closer, and you’ll realise it’s paper.

Thirty-five-year-old Vinodh Kumar is among the few in Chennai who practise Jianzhi, a traditional style of paper-cutting that originated in China. He’s been doing it for 13 years now. “This art is part of Indian culture too,” says Kumar, and adds, “If you go to an Ayudha Pooja event you’ll have seen paper cut and used for decoration. But we don’t see an aesthetic value in that; the challenge is to get people to see that.”

When he started out, it was a hobby, but as he went on to create more, Kumar got hooked on to it. Subsequently, a holiday in Goa with his friends changed his life. “I met a paper-cutting artist there and stayed with him for a couple of days. I learnt a lot from him,” he recalls..................Read more

Source: The Hindu