A Room to Pray

T.V.Santhosh  

The Guild Art Gallery is proud to present T. V. Santhosh’s solo exhibition titled ‘A Room to Pray’ in collaboration with Avanthay Contemporary, Zurich at Zurich.  T V. Santhosh has acquired a major presence in the Indian and International art scene over the last decade. T.V. Santhosh’s recent sculptural installation from his show ‘Countdown’ was shown at ‘Passage to India’ in the Frank Cohen collection at Initial Access. Some of his prominent museum shows are ‘Aftershock’ at Sainsbury Centre, Contemporary Art Norwich, England in 2007 and ’Continuity and Transformation’ Museum show promoted by Provincia di Milano, Italy. 

In the present suite of works – Santhosh presents a sculptural installation titled ‘A Room to Pray’ - a poignant and  enigmatic work that touches ones inner core and deals with the  history of violence , implications of terror and its inherent complexities involved. His works pose questions at recent political issues of hate theories and belief systems that problematize the notions of progress and its side effects. He constructed a room with walls out of hundreds of bones and the floor with LED panels that looks like a burning carpet which reads a touching story of a victim of violence .For him this is a room where one is constantly reminded of errors the humanity committed throughout the history. It is a room for one to pray not for oneself but for the others, for the whole humanity. Santhosh’s concept for this show is in the form of a poem penned by him.

 Mercy (Concept note)

A vision wretched enough

To enter deep into your mundane existence,

Sending a chilling shiver through the nerves.

A revelation of a war torn past

And terror infested present collide.

Your nimble feet

Touches the land of land mines.

There blooms not lotus,

But flames and screams of innocents.

A vision of your sacred blood and flesh

Makes you more vulnerable…timid.

Your prophecies went cutting across,

Wailing…all the way through.

The future, not an end to your worries

May be just an apparition of your hounding dreams.

Are you a pessimist?

You stupid, don’t hurt my eyes!

A cluster of bones.

Will all those souls come back

And ask for it once again to pay back the debts?

Huge debts that rips your heart apart.

Piles of curses,

For the errors the history accumulated.

Look into your target who cries for your mercy.

It is just the same at  both sides of the barbed wires.

When will you stop,

Before the God himself intervenes?

I have made a room for you to pray.

T.V.Santhosh.

© T. V. Santhosh  

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