Chennai’s 'Kannadi Cupboard' Transforms Everyday Life Into Art, Zines, & Shared Stories

Every Indian household has that one cabinet. It usually has a wooden frame and glass panels. It usually occupies one big corner of a room. And it almost always has every random thing a household needs. Let me tell you what mine has — glasses, of all kinds: wine glasses, shot glasses, stained glasses that were a Diwali gift, 'Cards Against Sanskaar', the ceramic bowl we put our keys in but never use, random receipts, and Q-tips. Some even have porcelain elephants, dusty trophies from school, or faded photo frames whose glass has long since cracked. Now, these cupboards are called different things in different places, but in most South Indian homes, it’s the 'Kannadi Cupboard' — the glass cupboard that quietly holds fragments of everyday life.

To honour these random, mundane, and deeply familiar objects that inhabit our cupboards, Prasanna Venkatesh and Keerthana Alageshan started 'Kannadi Cupboard', an everyday art gallery based in Chennai. What began as an idea to turn domestic nostalgia into an artistic conversation soon turned into a community space that celebrates the overlooked. It started with the duo reaching out to multiple creatives, asking them to send an object from their own kannadi cupboards — something they couldn’t throw away but couldn’t quite explain why they still kept. These objects were displayed together in an exhibition, and now live inside an actual glass cupboard at the gallery, as if the home had expanded into an art space.

Kannadi Cupboard also hosts a Zine Club called 'One Side Paper' on the second Sunday of every month. The club champions a medium often dismissed for its simplicity, inviting people to explore its freedom — to make something out of anything. Old newspapers, magazine cutouts, scribbled notes, dried leaves, and pressed flowers — literally anything can become part of a story. The zines made during these meetings are raw, unfiltered, and delightfully honest, often centred around a theme. In August, for example, participants worked with old educational charts, creating zines reminiscent of the colouring books we all scribbled onto as children, bringing a sense of play back into the creative process.

From organising self-published book fairs to hosting salad potlucks, the events curated here feel like a collage of things you once dreamt up and then quietly forgot; the ideas you scribbled into notebook corners and dismissed as either too outrageous or too ordinary. Kannadi Cupboard gathers all those little fragments of memory, curiosity, and care, and gives them a new home; one that’s equal parts nostalgia and discovery. It’s a reminder that even the most mundane corners of our lives can hold stories worth sharing and art worth preserving.

You can follow them on Instagram here.

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