Vivan Sundaram: Inviting the world into his art

Remembering Vivan Sundaram through images of his works displayed in a 2018 retrospective at Kiran Nadar Museum in New Delhi.

The artist against his painting “May 68”, which echoes the student protests and civil unrest that broke out in Paris that year. | Photo Credit: Ajay Jaiman

In its tribute piece, the New York Times refers to Vivan Sundaram as “a pivotal, and political, figure in Indian art”.

Man With Numbers,” 2013, fibreglass, from the Postmortem exhibition | Photo Credit: Ajay Jaiman

Sundaram, the philosophical, adventurous and free-spirited artist who died on March 29, was an activist to the last. Indeed, while in London in the 1960s, he had briefly contemplated abandoning art for full-time activism. He was dissuaded but Sundaram remained intimately in tune with social issues throughout his career, a child of the 60s and of “the kind of freedom it gave”, as he once said.

Returning to India, Sundaram responded to its kaleidoscopic complexity by embracing a multitude of forms and materials, charcoal, paint, found objects, photographs, and videos. But it was as a visceral response to the Safdar Hashmi murder in 1989 that Sundaram pivoted towards the eclectic, iterative and edgy installations so closely identified with him, a form of which he was one of the early pioneers in the country and which he made distinctly his own. A form he clearly saw as being most receptive to his own quicksilver artistic responses to the world unravelling around him.

“Carrier 1996”. Turned over wooden boat elevated on oars. The boat recurred in Sundaram’s work for over 15 years, a metaphor for journeys, migrations, discovery.  | Photo Credit: Ajay Jaiman

“Bad Drawings for Dost,” 2005, created with pencil, tracing paper, and string for his lifelong friend Bhupen Khakhar.  | Photo Credit: Ajay Jaiman

In 2018, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in New Delhi organised a retrospective titled “Step Inside and You Are No Longer a Stranger,” curated by Roobina Karode.

”Re-take of Amrita”, 2006, a series of digital photo montages. The series enters the Sher Gil family and recasts its members in new roles.  | Photo Credit: Ajay Jaiman

”Home,” 1994, installation with steel, kalamkhush paper, video, its walls bearing the tears, stains, and scars of communal violence. | Photo Credit: Ajay Jaiman

The title was the same as one of Sundaram’s paintings, which is displayed in the Punjab University Museum. That the painting was made in 1976, the year he converted his Kasauli home into an art centre, seems emblematic of the wide-open arms with which he invited the world into his art and his art into the world.

From Postmortem, Sundaram’s series using body parts of a mannequin. “The body, thrice dead, revives as ‘sculpture’” | Photo Credit: Ajay Jaiman

“Portrait of Father”, 1980, from the exhibition, “Place for People” (1981). | Photo Credit: Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation

The retrospective was an extensive showcase of the artist’s multimedia practice, with works sourced from 42 collections, both private and public. There were 180 artworks—drawings, paintings, sculptures, collages, photo montages, and installations. For the first time, visitors could see in one space the vast range of Sundaram’s oeuvre and his evolving experiments with modernism, semi-abstraction, pop art, montage, installation, etc.

Seeing each work as pieces of the continuum of the artist’s career, one which would continue well into 2022, visitors could become keenly aware of how he entangled memory and material, history and news, dreams and perspectives to create a unique way of interacting with and responding not just to social and cultural issues but also with his viewers and with fellow artists. Thus, his installations were pieces that provoked but at the same time allowed the viewer to enter them and be immersed inside. He often quoted his artistic inspirations and peers—Amrita Sher-Gil, Bhupen Khakhar, R.B. Kitaj, Nalini Malani, or Himmat Shah.

”Shoeskin Hoop,” made of old leather shoes, 2011, from the Gagawaka: Making Strange exhibition. In 2009, Sundaram began making sculptural garments with materials he said were “all sourced from the dustbin”.  | Photo Credit: Ajay Jaiman

”Meaning of Failed Action: Insurrection 1946,” conceived by Vivan Sundaram and cultural theorist Ashish Rajadhyaksha, with British sound artist David Chapman and film historian Valentina Vitali. | Photo Credit: Ajay Jaiman

The multiplicity of media and genres he played with meant that many of his projects owned distinctly different aesthetics. As a result, as a note released at the retrospective said, “Consciously marking and articulating his position in art-making as someone who is ‘not afraid of being elsewhere’ and as someone who has continuously pushed the agency of art, Vivan Sundaram’s oeuvre cannot be categorized in any single paradigm.”

”Mill Re-call,” 2015. Moveable stage prop made with motor car parts, quoting Ramkinkar Baij’s “Mill Call”, from the 409 Ramkinkars show | Photo Credit: Ajay Jaiman

”One and the Many” from the 409 Ramkinkars show, 2015. Miniaturised terracotta recasts of sculptor Baij’s works by Vivan Sundaram and a group of young artists. | Photo Credit: Ajay Jaiman

All but one image in this photo essay are from the 2018 retrospective and form in themselves a moving tribute to the late artist.

Ajay Jaiman is a photographer, designer and programmer. He manages a digital publishing company and a web-solutions consultancy. He can be reached at: www.jaiman.org