Effigies of Turbulent Yesterdays

The genre of the landscape can be understood, among other things, as a product of the encounter between the pastoral imagination and the aspirations of an emergent landed gentry, whose relationship to their property is often the ostensible subject matter of the paintings. Apart from whatever aesthetic qualities that these works might have, they allude to a history of dispossession of jointly held resources, - largely through the private enclosure of open fields that had been farmed collectively by the peasantry over centuries, - a history that remains invisible in the paintings themselves.  In a similar way, the equestrian portrait can be seen as a figuration of power. It's relative rarity is perhaps the result of generic conventions that tied it to an essentially commemorative purpose, but coupled with the fact that in the history of portraiture it is the powerful who have until recently had the privilege of being represented, one can see that it functioned almost exclusively in the service of ruling elite in establishing and extending their authority over their subjects. In painting, the equestrian figure is also implicated in conquest, as he traverses a landscape that he metaphorically colonizes or administers and which became (or was) his fiefdom, acquired and maintained more often than not through the exercise of illegitimate power.

These iconographic conventions are here stood on their head (or lack thereof). In 'Effigies of Turbulent Yesterdays' we have a clash of different linguistic registers, with the powerful mimetic realism of the equestrian portrait meeting head on the schematized fountain of blood that springs from it, whose sources one can trace to miniature painting as well as comic book illustration. If the King is the Head of the State, then a decapitated monument is both a ludicrous and pitiful spectacle, - an act of iconoclasm which, like all forms of subversion attempts not to destroy it, but to turn it into an inverted representation of itself, or in this case, into an anti-monument that lays bare the disavowed histories of violence that sustain it, and by extension all such iconographies of power. The King famously has two bodies, a physical one that will eventually be subject to infirmity and death, and a symbolic one which metonymically stands in for the body politic and which continues to extend its dominion, by coercion or consent through the accoutrements of power. This act of symbolic regicide thus exemplifies the truth of every iconoclastic gesture, - the recognition that every contestation of power starts with the destruction of the images through which it's authority continues to be exercised and reproduced,  - and thereby indicates the limits of sovereign power itself.

Sathyanand  Mohan 

T. V Santhosh’s sculpture, Effigies of Turbulent Yesterdays  - a reworking of the traditional equestrian statue – evokes simultaneously the public square and the public pedestal. Town or public squares have traditionally been built with community and political gatherings in mind. Traditionally they were used as parade grounds, and for the exercise and display of military and ruling power. The concept of town squares was introduced to India first by the Portuguese followed by the British. Equestrian statues by contrast were intended to function as monuments to the landed gentry, rulers, or military commanders.

Effigies of Turbulent Yesterdays takes the sculptural and traditional form of public sculpture and changes its underlying premise. Where traditionally these forms of public sculptures were intended to evoke power – through the symbolic form of an individual backed by lineage and/or military power – while building a space for the contemplation and formation of a community, Santhosh’s Effigies offers a bleaker set of counterpoints.

The sculpture fashioned in fiberglass features a headless rider in military uniform on a horse. According to popular readings the fate of the rider is often indicated at by the position of the legs of the horse. A horse with a fore leg up indicates that the rider was wounded in battle or died of wounds incurred in battle – as is the case here. A rearing horse indicates the rider died in battle while a horse with all four hooves on the ground indicates that the rider died outside of battle. This lore further indicates the monumentalizing of an individual. Taken in conjunction with the headless unnamed military figure that sits astride the horse, it becomes clear that Santhosh proposes a contemporary counterpoint to the notion of centralized power, by removing the head and replacing it with a fountain of blood.  In so doing Santhosh implies that the location of the statue is a space of contention; no longer just a place of peaceful gathering and the exercise of public participation, it could also become a central location where terror can be enacted, signifying that symbols of power and authority can be manipulated and corrupted. 

By imposing the notion of fragmented and continuous time upon the body of the sculpture in the form of timers that count down from a number only to return to the same number when the counter restarts, Santhosh indicates that the process of occupation and exercise of power are reiterative and continuous. The embodiment of power and authority in an individual and/or a symbolic figure – whether in religion, ideology or politics – continues unabated and unchanged regardless of the change in the environment.

Renuka Sawhney

Mumbai, September 2013