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Lot 21

 

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Speaking about his Cuckoonebulopolis series of works, Surendran Nair explains that although they are “based on a rather loose idea of utopia”, they “…are not meant to be arguments for or against utopias. The idea here is like a backdrop, a theatrical device, to sharpen the contours of my images whilst at play and to accentuate the tenor of whatever they address…To some extent, this particular series, I would like to imagine, is an attempt at... Speaking about his Cuckoonebulopolis series of works, Surendran Nair explains that although they are “based on a rather loose idea of utopia”, they “…are not meant to be arguments for or against utopias. The idea here is like a backdrop, a theatrical device, to sharpen the contours of my images whilst at play and to accentuate the tenor of whatever they address…To some extent, this particular series, I would like to imagine, is an attempt at reflecting on the possibilities and the difficulties of imagining something secular. Some of these works are, in that sense, (personal) responses to some of the problems that we are entrenched in” (as quoted in Itinerant Mythologies: Surendran Nair, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, 2008, p. 24).

The present lot, part of Nair’s Cuckoonebulopolis series, draws the viewer’s attention simultaneously to the idea and the impossibility of a life of isolation in contemporary social contexts. Literally with his head in the clouds, Nair’s half-man, half-swan protagonist seems to be rather precariously perched atop the long column of a central, public monument. In an effort to escape the responsibilities social life, this hybrid creature has done exactly the opposite, presenting himself almost unavoidably to public scrutiny and consumption. It is this vulnerable state, somewhere between presence and absence, belonging and alienation, through which the artist emphasizes the fluid nature of identity and the sociopolitical forces that it is subject to, and often at risk of violence from.

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