The Kerala government has announced the recipients of its highest honour in the visual arts. Contemporary artist C Douglas has been chosen for the Raja Ravi Varma Award for 2023, and sculptor N N Rimzon for the award for 2024. The announcement was made in Thiruvananthapuram by the state's tourism, culture and cinema minister, P C Vishnunath, at a press conference in the state capital.

The Raja Ravi Varma Award, named after the celebrated Kerala-born painter, recognises sustained and outstanding contribution to painting, sculpture and contemporary art practice. It is the state's most prestigious prize for visual artists, and the two winners represent different generations and disciplines within Kerala's art scene, one working in painting and the other in sculpture.

C Douglas is a contemporary artist whose work has been shown widely in India and abroad, and whose practice has helped shape the conversation around contemporary painting in Kerala. N N Rimzon, born in Kakkoor in Ernakulam district in 1957, is one of India's best-known sculptors, recognised for work that draws on the landscapes, materials and cultural memory of his home state.

The awards underline the state government's institutional commitment to honouring artists whose work has had a lasting impact on Indian art. The minister set out the government's continued support for the visual arts in Kerala, and the announcement was welcomed as recognition of two careers that have developed largely outside the commercial centres of Mumbai and Delhi, rooted instead in the artistic traditions of the south.