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Vivan Sundaram
‘The photograph as tableau has been in
existence as long as the history of photography. The constructed
still-life image persists as a genre. Photographs, moreover, can be made
similar in look and size to the object photographed. The trompe-l’oeil
effect—a real book-shelf, fake book-shelf an object in itself, an
artifact.
Marxism in the Expanded Field
is a photograph of Geeta’s book-shelf. Arranged informally, it reveals
areas of professional interest in a personal library. The viewer can
scan the shelves, know more about the general category ( Marxism ) under
which these books are placed, guess the specialization of the person to
whom the books belong. Marxism, the books tell us, has entered many
discourses, opened itself across an ‘expanded field’. The surface of the
books is embellished with postcards and coloured tabs, there is a happy
relationship with the reader. A sticker text runs across the boards of
the shelf—a teaser in Marx’s own words, “All that is solid melts into
air’.’ - Vivan Sundaram
Born 1943, Vivan Sundaram
studied at studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao
University in Baroda, followed by the Slade School of London, where he
met the artist R. B. Kitaj, under whom he trained for some time.
Sundaram is a founding member of SAHMAT, an artistic collective formed
in 1989 to promote artistic freedom.
Sundaram
participated in the landmark exhibition Place for People in
Mumbai and Delhi in 1981. His artworks have been exhibited widely both
nationally and internationally. His other recent exhibitions include
Past-Present-Continuous: 25 Years of the Guild, at CCA Galleries,
New Delhi; Garmenting: Costume as Contemporary Art, Museum of
Arts and Design, New York, 2022; Pose & Pause, sepiaEYE, New
York, 2021; A Time for Farewells, Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery,
Pennsylvania, 2019; Awakenings: Art and Society in Asia 1960s-1990s,
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Gyeongju, South Korea, 2019;
Continent, LMS Gallery, Brussels, Belgium, 2017; Remembering
Bhupen, Sarjan Art Gallery, Vadodara, 2015; Postdate: Photography
and Inherited History in India, San Jose Museum of Art, California,
USA, 2015; among others.
In 2018, a retrospective exhibition
titled Vivan Sundaram, A Retrospective: Fifty Years Step Inside and
You Are No Longer a Stranger was organised by the Kiran Nadar Museum
of Art, New Delhi. Some of his other solo exhibitions include Vivan
Sundaram: Disjunctures, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, 2018;
Vivan Sundaram, PHOTOINK, 2019; Terraoptics, sepiaEYE, 2017;
Vivan Sundaram: POSTMORTEM (after Gagawaka), Chemould Prescott Road,
Mumbai, 2014; Landfill, The Harrington Street Arts Centre,
Kolkata, 2014; Vivan Sundaram: Re-take of Amrita, Crow Museum,
Dallas, Texas, USA, 2014; Gagawaka: Making Strange, Chemould
Prescott Road, Mumbai, and Rabindra Bhawan, Lalit Kala Akademi, New
Dehli, 2011–12; among others.
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