Effigies of Turbulent Yesterdays, the art installation by T.V. Santhosh being exhibited at the ongoing 56th Venice Biennale, is garnering much attention from the international art audience. The Thrissur born artist has exhibited his work in many venues before including Moscow Biennale, Havana Biennale, Vancouver Sculpture Biennale and the Colombo Biennale was the last venue where it was put on display.
“This year, unfortunately we don’t have an Indian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, so my work has been exhibited at the National Pavilion of Iran, titled ‘The Great Game’. Thematically it deals with current geo-political issues, so the curators were looking for the kind of works that address the present global crisis. The Iranian pavilion includes artists from Afganisthan, India, Pakistan, Iraq among others. So, it is almost like a collaborative show with 40 artists — 20 artists from Iran and 20 from outside Iran. It is curated by Marco Meneguzzo from Italy and Mazdak Faiznia from Iran. Shilpa Gupta, Amar Kanwar, Hema Upadhyay and Riyas Komu along with me are a part of this pavilion. In the main pavilion there are also a few Indian artists including Madhusudhanan from Kerala,” says T.V. Santhosh.
Effigies of Turbulent Yesterdays shows a man in military uniform on a horse with its foreleg up indicating the man died in a war. However, the man’s head has been replaced by a fountain of blood and the portrait is dotted with timers.
Referring to the work he has exhibited he says, “I started this work in 2009 and completed it in 2011. My work is about the history of violence in war, how war and violence have different interpretations and implications and the different strategies used to reach a target. These scenes are usually made to celebrate war and in my work, I have tried to reinterpret it by slightly reworking the whole idea and it is represented from the perspective of a victim. The blood fountain was adapted from the painting of Chinnamasta Devi for my work to depict the flow of blood in war. The timers represent a whole lot of ideas like being time-bound, some form of war happening at all times, time counting down to zero in our lives, count down to the next war and so on, all into one image. In western countries, when they are demolishing an old building, they systematically detonate time bombs placed at strategic points of the building, without affecting the nearby buildings. These timers are also representative of systematically demolishing historical monuments from public memory.”
Despite being from Kerala, the artist says he has not done a major show in Kerala. “Back when I used to work with a resistance oriented organisation in Thrissur in the middle of 80s, I had exhibited many of my works in the city. I have also exhibited a few works in Kerala as part of group shows. But I’m yet to do a major solo show in the state and I hope to be able to do it soon,” he signs off.
