Contemporary Indian artist Vivan Sundaram has died at the age of 79 following complications from a hemorrhagic stroke earlier this month. Sundaram, who created work over nearly six decades, is best remembered for his multidisciplinary studio practice infused with activism and political awareness. Reports indicate that the artist had been ill for the past few months before his death. The news of his death was confirmed by Gallery Chemould in Mumbai.
“To say Vivan took risks is an understatement,” said Shireen Gandhy, creative director of Gallery Chermould. Hyperallergy “If you look at his practice, there is a great fidelity to the history of art, but at the same time he feels unencumbered when he approaches his problems with acute frankness.”
Sundaram was born in the northern Indian city of Shimla in 1943, the son of Kalyan Sundaram, India’s first post-Partition Law Secretary and second Chief Election Commissioner, and Indira Sher-Gil, younger sister of Hungarian-Indian modern artist Amrita Sher-Gil. Sundaram pursued a BA in painting at the Maharaja Sayajirao University in Vadodara, Gujarat from 1961 to 1965, followed by a postgraduate course as a Commonwealth Student at the Slade School of Fine Art in London from 1966 to 1968 under the tutelage of American artist RB Kitaj. Sundaram began studying film history at the Slade and incorporated this interest into his artwork throughout his life.
Sundaram was deeply influenced by his time in Europe, particularly the student-led May 68 protests against capitalism, imperialism and class discrimination in Paris, France. Sundaram returned to India in the early 1970s and began to address national and global disparities in his art practice inspired by British pop art, kitsch and abstraction. In the 1970s and 1980s, the artist developed multiple series of works that addressed and showed solidarity with oppressed populations, including but not limited to the Sikhs who suffered during the anti-Sikh riots in India of 1984 and the European Jews who died or fled during the Holocaust. Invested in Marxism, Sundaram also founded the Kasauli Art Center and the Journal of Arts and Ideas to create more opportunities for artists and writers to collaborate and work experimentally.
It was only in the early 1990s that Sundaram began to incorporate more unconventional materials into his practice. While addressing the Gulf War, the artist began combining motor oil stains with charcoal mark making in an eponymous series of 40 works that sat at the triangular intersection between drawing, painting, and installation. lation This material transition unlocked Sundaram’s interdisciplinary interests to combine film, photography, collage, printmaking and sculpture throughout his practice, culminating in mixed media installation exhibitions such as Collaboration/Combinations (1992), memorial (1993) and House/boat (1994). Sundaram’s practice continued to respond to current events and persistent injustices through the use of archival information and recycled materials related to his themes of exploration. Room with 12 beds (2005) delved into the histories and practices of waste pickers in India using worn shoe soles and rusted cot frames, an interest that was further explored in Bin (2008).
Sundaram also explored his own lineage through his work, examining and mixing archival documentation and information about his aunt Amrita Sher-Gil and maternal grandfather and amateur photographer Umrao Singh, both artists in their own right during pre-independence India. These deconstructions and reevaluations of his family are seen in Sher-Gil Archive (1995) and Re-Taking of Amrita (2001).
Sundaram was celebrated in two 50-year retrospective exhibitions in 2018: Enter and you are no longer a stranger at the Kiran Nadar Art Museum in New Delhi and disjunctions at Munich’s Haus der Kunst, both recalled his conceptual and material evolution while praising his lifelong commitment to activism and social awareness.
“He was rare in his creative and intellectual energy,” lamented Roshini Vadehra, director of the Vadehra Art Gallery, who also worked with Sundaram. “His political and activist side was one we all admired and drew strength from.”
Sundaram is survived by his wife, art critic and historian Geeta Kapur. His last rites and cremation will take place at noon tomorrow at the Lodhi Crematorium in New Delhi. A series of drawings by Sundaram of Heights of Macchu Pichu (1972) is currently on view at the Kochi Biennale in Kochi, India.
