Can a medium itself be the protagonist or author of an artwork? Through textures and multiple patterns, Mahalakshmi Kannappan creates a visual language with materials often discarded or not seen as conventional for fine art. Mediums in art often serve as a classification for a work to be considered fine or outsider art, allowing for an other-isation. Acknowledging and challenging these arbitrary biases head-on, the artist uses minimalism and flips the narrative by creating fine art with a rejected medium through an abstraction style. In Returning Shadows, there is a constant push and pull, the flat black surfaces seemingly pasted on one another but at junctures melting into each other. The vantage point for the viewer is forbidden, it makes the eye travel up and down in an attempt to enter the work. This possibly speaks to the struggles of artists from the Eastern world, attempting to enter a tesseract, complex and random art world dominated by oppressive stratification.

Such non-traditional aesthetics do not receive appreciation, for it is a language that is not spoken or recognised by the gatekeepers of fine art. However, that same rich history is now coming back to the forefront, their style and influence reclaiming the spaces they were forcibly rejected from. One can assume that the title is a cheeky hint to the same, of the return of shadows discarded in the dark, as they come up to the surface to challenge our internalised ways of seeing.