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Sundaram is an artist who has been consistent in his pursuit of a politically honed art. Some of his early work from the 1970s, such as the series The Heights of Macchu Picchu, The Discreet Chann of the Bourgeoisie and The Indian Emergency give voice to a constantly reactive subjectivity. During the early 1970s, he was actively involved with the student movement, and worked with activists. This activism later manifested in his involvement with the work of the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (Sahmat), of which he is a founder member and trustee. A keen organizer, he initiated the Kasauli Art Centre in 1976, which has hosted numerous national and international Art workshops and theatre productions. Sundaram's major output of paintings through the 1980s marks his involvement with a historically conscious figuration. One of the interesting dimensions of his work is the excavation of the historical through the painting. Often the historical also manifests as the personal in a situation of asserting a Third World identity and a position of solidarity with the exploited and the working classes. Sundaram's political consciousness has always seized upon the topical, upon the question that needs to be asked. The Gulf War of 1991 occasioned a series of works in engine oil and charcoal on paper. Though the use of unconventional media is not new to Sundaram, this series may be seen as being special in the move towards a more conceptually-oriented practice, that from then onwards, operates increasingly in three, and then four dimensions. In thematic terms, Sundaram's recent work remains concerned with social and environmental protest, and with an 'archaeology' of the recent past. In terms of practice, his interests in the appositional interventions of Dada and Surrealism. a well as such tendencies as Fluxus has led him to constantly reinterpret the role of the artist and the values of authorship and creativity, giving his recent work a strong conceptual content. Several of his recent projects involving the use of photographs, found objects, video and three-dimensional constructs in a variety of materials, are expressly collaborative. His role here becomes that of the arranger, the conductor, a curator in a quasi-archaeological dig that probes identities in the contemporary international context. Some of his recent exhibitions have had the appearance of meticulously presented mini-museums, each one geared to the expression of a set of conceptual meanings that are coded into every detail of the organized space. |