Vivan Sundaram

The work of Atul Dodiya, Sheela Gowda and Vivan Sundaram is presented as part of *Secular Practice: Recent Art from India*, an exhibition taking place at three Vancouver galleries in addition to the Contemporary Art Gallery and including the work of nine contemporary artists from India. Responding to the reality of living in a rapidly modernizing society, the work of the artists in the exhibition addresses issues ranging from freedom of expression, social justice, growing religious fundamentalism and widespread communal violence to sexuality, women's rights, the inequities of entrenched class and caste systems, the processes of history and memory, and the nature of art itself in these circumstances.

The other artists in the exhibition are Jayashree Chakravarty, Rummana Hussain, Bhupen Khakhar, Nalini Malani, Anand Patwardhan, and Pushpamala N. Participating galleries are the Charles H. Scott Gallery, Presentation House Gallery and the Vancouver Art Gallery.

*Secular Practice: Recent Art from India* itself is one of a number of components of the project *Moving Ideas: A Contemporary Cultural Dialogue with India* organized by Hoopoe Curatorial. The project also includes the exhibition *Dust on the Road: Canadian Artists in Dialogue with SAHMAT* at the Roundhouse Community Centre, film presentations, lectures, performance, and literary events.

Supplanting a legacy of modernism and characterized by interdisciplinary cultural projects including performance, installation and video, *Moving Ideas* examines what many participants and observers of contemporary Indian culture describe as a powerful shift in the form and content of representation over the past dozen years. It is part of a four-year initiative of art and cultural exchange intended to create an awareness of issues shared, in particular, by artists in Canada and India organized by Hoopoe Curatorial.

*Secular Practice: Recent Art from India* is generously supported by the Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Family Foundation.

Atul Dodiya, Sheela Gowda, Vivan Sundaram

Secular Practice: Recent Art from India

> "Originally from New Delhi and trained as a painter, Vivan Sundaram studied at M.S. University in Baroda and at the Slade School in London… The "historic awareness" manifested in Sundaram's work has translated itself in a series of installations but also in drawings, paintings, sculptures, and fabricated objects that participate in the sedimentation of memory and its representation."

> "Placed diagonally from the entrance, the house offers itself as a structure made out of steel, glass and paper – the latter richly textured and crinkled…Graphic marks evoke the assault of modernity and progress through chromatic plays with rust (grid) and black, whereas the white of the paper; both matter and support, absorbs unfamiliar traces dripping down the house's glass roof. To the corroded treatment of the industrial ele­ments, Sundaram opposes the sensual and sensorial plasticity of the hand-made volume, the house becoming a box – a figure as light as air recalling children's folding games with paper."

> "With its prow end raised by logs of wood and its stern floor covered with rusted tiles that also constitute its bottom, the boat seems to emerge from the ground or in the wake of its own displacement. It is a wrecked ship, crashed into, one of its flanks left open by an invisible battle. At the rudder-end, as from an imaginary observation post, a telescope is directed towards two video monitors showing a woman – one focusing on the back of her head, the other on her face – adorned and made up, expressing various feelings in traditional, theatrical movements."

> "The artist is acting against historical amnesia, inscribing the place and context of his encounters and questionings, thus prompting himself and the viewer to take a stand and become aware."


Excerpted from “House / Boat: Sculptures in Steel, Glass and Video” (cat.), OBORO, Montreal, 1994, pp. 19-26.

This is a side view of a boat head sculpture. White panels that seem to be made of parchments or pulp sheets cover the body of the boat. The boat is placed on the wooden bars placed on the floor. 

thumbnail_04-VivanSundaram-1996.jpeg

04-VivanSundaram-1996.jpeg

This is a side-view of a big cubical-shaped sculpture on the gallery floor. The surface is painted in white and some abstracted shapes of wheels and gears, a house, and birds are drawn. 

thumbnail_01-VivanSundaram-1996.jpeg

01-VivanSundaram-1996.jpeg

This is a side view of a big cubical-shaped sculpture on the gallery floor. The surface is painted in white and a grid pattern drawn in dark brown unevenly covers the surface. 

thumbnail_02-VivanSundaram-1996.jpeg

02-VivanSundaram-1996.jpeg

Two large sculptures are installed in the gallery. A white boat head with wood tile flooring is placed in the front. Two CRT TVs are placed on the boat. A cubical-shaped sculpture is in the back.

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03-VivanSundaram-1996.jpeg

The installation view of the gallery shows three artworks. A pair of white sheets are installed on the back wall, foregrounded by a white boat head. A white cubical-shaped sculpture is in the front.  

thumbnail_05-VivanSundaram-1996.jpeg

05-VivanSundaram-1996.jpeg

A close-up view of a pair of two artworks installed on the wall. A white pulp sheet on the right is moulded out of the round metal pan embedded in the sand-coloured rough pulp sheet. 

thumbnail_06-VivanSundaram-1996.jpeg

06-VivanSundaram-1996.jpeg

House/Boat

This catalogue was published in 1994 on the occasion of the exhibition House / Boat shown at OBORO, Montréal from September 20th to October 30th, 1994. The publication contains an essay in English and French by curator Marie-Michèle Cron.


Vivan Sundaram

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