Mohammed Sajid's ongoing illustration series, Folks of Kerala, celebrates the invisible fragments of his homeland — the conveniently overlooked yet unavoidable characters who populate Kerala's urban spaces. From flower sellers and fish hawkers to security guards and street sweepers, the subjects in the Bengaluru-based artist's works, gaze intently at the viewer.

They are surrounded by the objects, scents, words and tools that define their everyday lives. Rather than allowing them to fade into the background, Sajid gives them names, identities and stories.

The second edition of the series is currently in contention for the AOI World Illustration Awards 2026, one of the world's most prestigious illustration competitions. It features eight portraits: a chai maker, security guard, tailor, street sweeper, fish seller, coir worker, postman and flower seller.

Born out of what Sajid describes as “homesickness”, spotlights people he encountered every day but rarely paid close attention to. After graduating in Design and Applied Arts from the College of Fine Arts Kerala in Thiruvananthapuram in 2015, he moved to Bengaluru. The transition, and the pace of urban life, prompted him to look more closely at the communities he had left behind.

“I felt people in Bengaluru were hesitant to smile. Even when they did, it felt different,” says Sajid, who hails from Perambra in Kozhikode. “I grew up in a community where we knew everything about our neighbours.”

The first Folks of Kerala series, created in 2018, drew heavily from Indian folk aesthetics. Teal hues were used to depict skin tones, and the portraits offered only minimal contextual information through their settings. The 13-illustration series emerged from Sajid's desire to create something "familiar yet unique". But the project also left him creatively exhausted.

“I discontinued it because of fatigue,” he recalls.

The series was revived in 2025 with a more layered approach. “This time, I surrounded the subjects with objects and words associated with them. After completing the portraits, I gave them names and backstories. The colour palette and contrast are different too,” he says.

The newer works lean towards realism, particularly in their depiction of dusky complexions and facial features. At the same time, they embrace a vibrant, pop art-inspired visual language. The compositions are unapologetically maximalist, packed with typography, objects, gridlines and design markings.

“The lines and dots were added as a challenge to AI to try and replicate the kind of work I do,” says Sajid. “Using AI to create art in our style is unacceptable to me as an artist. Some may see these marks as rough work, but they are also a nod to my training as a design student.”

Sajid is no stranger to high-profile illustration work. In 2019, he designed Google's doodle marking actor Madhubala's 84th birth anniversary, depicting her iconic role as Anarkali in Mughal-e-Azam (1960). For the artwork, he reinterpreted the CMYK colour palette to evoke the visual language of the film's era.

The vibrancy of his work, he says, is rooted in Kerala itself.

“Growing up in Kerala, temple festivals were explosions of colour. The lorries on our roads, the posters at bus stops, even the illustrations beside autorickshaw number plates — nothing is subdued,” he says.

His earliest artistic influence, however, was much closer to home. “I remember colouring sessions with my mother when I was young. She would secretly sketch portraits of actors from magazine covers, even though our religion discouraged us from reading them. There was also a mural in my third-grade classroom — coconut trees, water bodies and a landscape — painted by her.”

Sajid jokes that he became an artist after realising science was not his calling.

As for the next addition to Folks of Kerala, he is in no hurry. “I started making these works to break away from the monotony of daily life,” he says. “I don't want to force myself to create them. I'll make them when I feel like it.”

Mohammed Sajid’s works are shared on his Instagram handle @muhammedsajid.n