Important Notice

Riyas Komu began his series of massive portraits in the late 1990s. “These are the faces of people captured in the attitude of waiting, of foreboding or memorialising: these are the faces of witnesses, who depose before us, silently obliging us to acknowledge the genocides and mass migrations, the families and desolations of our catastrophic epoch” (Ranjit Hoskote, “The Menace of Framing, The Persistence of Hope: Recent Paintings and Sculptures... Riyas Komu began his series of massive portraits in the late 1990s. “These are the faces of people captured in the attitude of waiting, of foreboding or memorialising: these are the faces of witnesses, who depose before us, silently obliging us to acknowledge the genocides and mass migrations, the families and desolations of our catastrophic epoch” (Ranjit Hoskote, “The Menace of Framing, The Persistence of Hope: Recent Paintings and Sculptures by Riyas Komu” in Unconditional, Sakshi Gallery exhibition catalogue, 2003, not paginated).

Celebrating tales of survival, life stories that stand starkly out of the ordinary, and strong personal histories, the artist uses his portraits to offer the subaltern a voice. Whether they are of the young boys who work at the mechanic’s garage next to his Mumbai studio, or of the innocent men and women who inadvertently found themselves fighting for survival on a daily basis in the battlefields of the Middle East, these epic portraits confront viewers through their scale, forcing them to consider the subjects and their situations, thus giving the voiceless a chance to be heard.

In these large canvases, Komu renders his subjects with almost confrontational gazes, establishing them as equal legatees of the world they share with the viewer. These monumental portraits in tight close-up are “…a way of making palpable what would otherwise have escaped attention, given that zapping is the basis of today’s media-driven spectatorial regime” (Deepak Ananth, “Keeping Vigil”, India Contemporary, GEM Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition catalogue, 2009, p. 73).

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