Kerala

Kerala’s floor art speaks a different material language from the powder traditions around it: its most celebrated form is drawn in nothing but flowers. This chapter covers the state’s traditions, led by the pookalam of Onam — the layered floral carpet that grows through the festival’s ten days — treated in full in the member essay below, with the wider petal register described in Petals. The ritual drawing tradition of kalamezhuthu will join it as its sources complete verification. Throughout, the essays keep to the attributed register: what the tradition does, where it appears, and what its practitioners are described as bringing to it.