“I prefer to see
myself as an artist who is bothered
about what is happening around us.”
Surendran Nair
about what is happening around us.”
Surendran Nair
Surendran
Nair came to prominence in 2000 when his work An actor
rehearsing the interior monologue of Icarus was ordered to be withdrawn
from an exhibition at India’s preeminent National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi
by the recently elected BJP-led
National Democratic Alliance government for depicting The Ashoka
Pillar (India’s national emblem) in
a less than reverential manner. The other 24 artists participating in the “Combine—Voice for the New Century” exhibition
withdrew their works in solidarity with Nair for this “blatant attack on
artistic freedom” causing the exhibition to be cancelled.
At the time Nair was
astounded that his painting “an allegorical means to suggest the need for
reflection on our ties” could cause such offence. “I cannot understand how my
painting of the Ashoka pillar with the Greek mythological character Icarus
standing on top of it can be constituted as a slight to a national symbol,”
he is reported
to have said.
Known internationally for his allegorical paintings, Nair’s
work combines the myths of India and the ancient Greeks with a dramatic flair
placed in a modern day context. In an attempt to pigeonhole his work Nair is
often referred to as a surrealist in the vein of René
Magritte, a classification he rejects.
As he told the Times of
India “It is a misconception. I am no surrealist! That is, if one
were referring to surrealism in the sense that it explores the unconscious or
the subconscious; in the sense that it is something inexplicable, absurd or
magical, to a lesser degree, I would still say no. But one may find a semblance
of it in a degenerated sense, at a technical level.”
In an attempt to classify his work Nair
has stated about his Corollary Mythologies, “In a way Corollary Mythologies are
about belonging and dissent. In that sense I imagine it to have political
undertones, however subtle, which is informed of history, mythology, real and
imagined events. Art history, notions of tradition and identity and its
relationship with modernity, of language, sexuality, politics, religious and
other faiths etc. Without emphasizing any of these in particular, I address
these issues simultaneously. Sometimes rendered sentimentally, literally,
cryptically or otherwise metaphorically oblique, they are both detached and
reflective and at times often with a mischievous gaze, making innocent jokes,
and at other times being ironical and quizzical too.”
Nair currently has two galleries showing
his work. Mumbai’s Sakahi Gallery is
showing Spatial Arrangements of
Colours, Lines, Forms and Desires until the 31st of May and New Dehli’s Kiran
Nadar Museum of Art is showing Surendran
Nair: drawings, print and watercolours (1970s-1990s) until the 30th of July.
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