ART AND ACTIVISM COLLIDE AT SHARJAH BIENNIAL
▶ Late artist Vivan Sundaram’s last exhibition is on show in the emirate. Neeta Lal looks back at his career
Celebrated Indian artist Vivan Sundaram has a special commission at the Sharjah Biennial. Visitors to the show, which runs until June 11, can explore a broad collection of works by the trailblazer.
Commenting on the inclusion of his pieces in the Sharjah exhibition, Sundaram, who died last week aged 79, wrote that the late Nigerian art critic and conceiver of the biennial Okwui Enwezor’s proposition suggested “a narrative that is dynamic yet recursive in an ethically accountable way”.
He added: “I present a photography-based project, Six Stations of a Life Pursued (2022), a choreography of bodies that have undergone violence, experienced incarceration and lived through mourning. The sixth ‘station’ signifies a journey premised on the historical and rehearsed with activist resolve.”
Sundaram was born in Shimla, the capital city of India’s northern state of Himachal Pradesh, and he lived there with his parents Kalyan Sundaram and Indira Sher-Gil – sister of noted Indian modern artist Amrita Sher-Gil. He later married art historian and critic Geeta Kapur.
A prolific artist, thinker and activist, Sundaram has left behind a rich legacy of art, his oeuvre spanning mediums including painting, sculpture, installation, photography and video.
This versatility put him at the helm of the Indian contemporary art scene even as he formulated a new aesthetic vocabulary to push artistic boundaries and challenge conventions.
Sundaram also had a significant academic pedigree. After studying painting at the celebrated Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, in the western Indian state of Gujarat, he graduated in the history of cinema at the Slade School of Art, London.
Active in student politics in the UK, he was deeply influenced by European anti-imperialism and anti-consumerism. He returned to India in the 1970s and carried forth with his two loves – art and activism, the two often coalescing seamlessly.
“Sundaram’s art has transcended mediums and he has created elaborate and layered installations, using elements of sculptures, photographs and video. His work Memorial (1993, 2014), was made in response to communal violence in Bombay,” reads a statement by the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust, of which Sundaram was a founding trustee. “It was a site-specific installation at the Victoria Memorial, Calcutta [Kolkata], now referred to as History Project (1998)”.
Deeply interested in the intersection of society, politics and the urban landscape, in his profound series Trash (2008), he explored the social impact and aesthetics of urban waste and vintage objects.
Based on the thought-provoking aesthetics of second-hand goods, the work recalled Sundaram’s installation, Great Indian Bazaar (1997), and was a continuation of his large 2005 exhibition living.it.out. in.delhi. His gargantuan and fantastical cityscape, which he crafted from rubbish in his own studio in New Delhi, seamlessly carried the theme forward.
“In over 50 years of art practice, Vivan Sundaram has been just that kind of artist-explorer,” wrote art expert Chitra Padmanabhan in a column for The Wire news agency. “His ceaseless experimentation with new mediums, materials and forms, so as to engage with his immediate context and the ebb and flow of the world, marks him out as a singular presence among his contemporaries.
“As does his passion to trace the shadow of the past – history – over the present through the idea of the archive and memory.” Gallerist Shireen Gandhy, creative director at Chemould Gallery, Mumbai, which often displayed Sundaram’s works, says that in the artist’s immense body of work, there are two that hugely impacted her.
“One is 12 Bed Ward and the other is Memorial. 12 Bed Ward was made with old shoes, string, wire and light bulbs that dimly hung from the ceiling. The room felt more moving than eerie. It had references of disposability, reuse, salvage,” she says.
The other work, Memorial, centred on a photograph of a dead man lying bent in the middle of the road, was also very evocative, she says. “When you speak about art leaving an indelible memory of a moment in history, Vivan’s work did just that. Etching deeply the moment of that history of the Bombay riots in our minds and hearts,” she says.
Small wonder Sundaram’s contributions to Indian contemporary art earned him numerous accolades, including the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest civilian honours. “In the early ’90s, if one looks back at a breakthrough of mediums, where the norm of artists working in traditional oil paintings, Vivan would be considered one of the earliest ‘breakthrough artists’. He truly was the trailblazer,” says Gandhy.
Sundaram’s practice was also instrumental in shaping the discourse around issues of memory, identity and history, famously fusing the personal with the political, his peers say. “His prolific output transcended the traditional boundaries of art. By forming an art centre, a publication and Sahmat, he pushed Indian artists in new directions and has left an indelible impact on the country’s art scene,” explains his friend, artist Nalini Malani.
Sundaram’s work is also reflective of his upbringing and personal history, as well as by the cultural and political shifts that characterise postcolonial India.
One of his earliest series of works, titled The Sher-Gil Archive, exemplifies his interest in the intersections of history and memory, she adds.
Besides acclaim in India, Sundaram’s art garnered international attention. It has featured at the Gwangju Biennale, the Biennale of Sydney, the Taipei Biennial and the Sharjah Biennial.
In the final years of his life Sundaram received some of the widest recognition of his work.
In 2018, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in New Delhi hosted a retrospective, which was described by fellow artist Krishen Khanna as “breathtaking in its scope and imaginative boldness and a great tribute to a unique artist”.
He pushed Indian artists in new directions and has left an indelible impact on the country’s art scene
NALINI MALANI
Artist
The Sharjah Biennial runs until June 11. More information is at www.sharjahart.org