The first solo show by Hyderabad-based Sujith SN titled Map is Not the Territory is built on the twin axis of violence and structures. Both the subjects have been explored before by many artists, so the thematic is certainly not novel. The young artist however infuses new life into the subject through minimalist treatment and understatement. His palette is limited with charred siennas, ochres and grey water colours, dry pastel and charcoal dominating the surface of paper, though some of the works do have brighter colours.
The paintings are dotted with single deserted structure or grids of buildings. In one of the works the artist has reconstructed a simplified map of an ancient city; a kiln with billowing smoke from its chimney stack, explosions setting fire to buildings, imploding structures, all devoid of human presence. Domestic and external violence that define urbanism are symbolically located within this imagined space through various markers of modern militaristic and hierarchical society.
The structural outcrops within the bleak and dark landscapes loom over the canvas, puncturing the vast elemental voids with human interventions. These building seem to be targets and loci of violence both. Projectiles such as flaming arrows, cannons and balls of fire seem to be approaching the edifices, as if to destroy them, at other times, the destructible emerge from the buildings. According to the Sujith, “these paintings suggest, as Bourdieu has pointed out, that buildings not only serve a functional purpose, but they also express a set of symbolic opposition and hierarchies that order the societal divisions.”
The artist derives inspiration mainly from the aggressiveness of civilisational forces that encourage urbanisation with all the inherent cannibalistic, consumerist and acquisitiveness elements. The changing landscapes disturb him to the extent that he tries to contain these within the minimalist urbanscapes on canvas; attempting to make sense of the vast transformations in systems and institutions that govern post modern lifecycles.
This dichotomy between the past and present, the idyllic past and the transformative future with its disjuncture’s, dislocations, relocation of power patterns have often been excavated by artists, especially young artist such as Sujith who are internally restless and experimental and yet in search for stability and order outside.
— The writer is an art historian, curator and critic