n our political rhetoric, we often hear plans to transform Lahore into Paris, or claims to convert the country into the state of Medina; whereas in reality the approaching future for Pakistan could be ending up in a situation similar to Sri Lanka. This SAARC state was recently on the brink of bankruptcy. It has also faced other disasters in the past: a 26-year-long civil war, and a tsunami that hit the island in 2004 claiming many lives.

Sivasubramaniam Kajenderdran, an artist from Sri Lanka, lost his mother and sister in the tsunami; and his hands and legs were wounded in the civil war, which also left its physical memory in the form of shells in his body. He carried these tiny bits of metal in his flesh, while he was at the Beaconhouse National University (BNU) to earn his MA Art & Design between 2017 and 2019. Kajenderdran, or Siva (as he was normally called) lately displayed his works in Lahore. The exhibition, One Brain, Two Minds, curated by Rameesha Azeem, was held from 22^nd to 31^st May at Haam Gallery, Lahore. (The show included Uzair Shahid, another BNU graduate).

When a viewer looks at works created in Sri Lanka and installed in Pakistan, he/ she makes a bridge between the two nations, two types of people – and two artists. Yes, two artists; because within the skin of Sivasubramaniam Kajenderdran, lives a large part of his native land, along with a small segment of the country where he spent two years pursuing his post graduate degree.

It’s not only Siva, all of us collect identities, experiences and places within ourselves. Often these are not even picked directly, but received through other sources. An artist, normally searches for forms, mediums, and technique, perhaps invented somewhere else, or in the past, but he/ she brings a new set of meanings – hence a new way of looking at the surroundings. In that sense, one could connect with the art of Siva, even though his imagery, characters and other pictorial elements obviously are linked to his soil. In a literal sense, because this body of work deals with his private history and the chronicles of his land – without much distance between the two. The painted works on paper, which depict a dark-skinned man’s profile with birds, or vegetables or flowers on his head refer to the artist’s loss of his family, but are linked to his country’s past too.

In his Lost Love series, Siva created a line of uniform portraits. Like passport photographs, which comprise face, neck and a section of upper body (pictures that follow the format of busts in marbles from the past). But the difference of Siva’s view point from the convention of these images of identity, lies in his preference for profile. And not only profile – an angle of seeing the face that joins his paintings on paper to the traditional image making of the South Asia such as the faces of emperors, princes, princesses, rajas and nobility in miniature painting – but addition of an extra element which somehow completes the ‘image’ of the person.

This ‘addition’ – ironically stands for a huge void in the artist’s life. His mother’s body was never found, presumably finished by the fish. Siva recognises that birds catch fish, so a range of migratory birds, each perched on an identical character repeatedly rendered in the same colour, background, scale, skill, sensitivity in 30 pieces – is waiting for its food. Both entities in a way are looking for the lost mother. In another set of 19 paintings, titled Prayer Series one finds the same profile, but this time less stylised, and almost caught in mid-sentence, with mouth half open, and a prayer bead on his neck – uncannily pulled to the direction of his gaze. These paintings are further divided into two group, one with vegetable and other with flowers placed on top of the protagonist.

Siva’s work invites us to read multiple texts about identity, trauma, grief, carnage, of private, political – and ourselves through the eyes/ bodies of others: birds, fish, flowers – our loved ones. It is like the Islamic Republic comparing itself with Sri Lanka on a regular basis.

For Siva, these works are also attached to death and disappearance. His mother and sister died, but the mother disappeared in the great harbour wave. The artist painted vegetables, which his mother used to cook for him, and which till this day remind him of his lost parent. Flowers in Sri Lanka, like many other countries, are used for funeral rites, graves and rituals of death.

In these compositions, the artist has extended space outside of his small surfaces. The position of man’s eyes, birds’ beaks and placement of vegetables to the right-hand side of the picture frame, make us imagine something beyond. Siva drew these birds, flowers, vegetables to denote an intimate passage of his life, echoing the words of Michael Ondaatje, when he placed “past and future on this table like a road”, so every viewer can tread on this private piece of grief.

But as birds fly across national borders, vegetables are imported from one country to other, and flowers are planted in faraway soils, these indicate another dimension of our existence. The memory of colonialism, which, though not sudden like the tsunami, was as disastrous as the natural calamity.

The artist identifies migratory birds with colonisers, for their colours compared to local complexions, as well as their nature of landing at a new location, to catch their prey, and then depart. Remaining oblivious to the past, and disloyal to the ground/ sea under their feet. In that sense, these paintings – like all creative products – can be read with a different connotation, with a strong political content.

The presence of political is evident in another set of (42) ink on paper drawings, Self Portrait Series. Addressing the subjugation of South Asians; especially those (like the artist’s ancestors) who converted to Christianity. Now according to some sources, “Christianity was introduced to the Indian subcontinent by Thomas the Apostle, who sailed to the Malabar region in the present-day Kerala state in 52 AD”; but since the last few centuries, this creed has been associated with Imperialism. Native population in conquered regions of South America, Africa, and many parts of Asia, adopted Christianity (through force, obligation or choice), changing their names, replacing their languages, discarding their dresses and rejecting their literature, art, histories.

The artist, a Tamil by birth, represents himself with symbols of Christianity in simplified, rapid and sensitive monochromatic strokes. Marks which resemble halo, crucifixion, cross, nails, robe, thus project the artist as monk or saint. This element of religion is not odd, because Sivasubramaniam Kajenderdran, witnessing the Civil War, and being wounded, was surprised by his survival (could have only been attributed to divine intervention, if not fate, or chance.). He defines himself as a Tamil, a dark person, a Christian, hence multiple identities in a postcolonial world.

These remarkable works of art, when shown in another land and detached from their original meaning/ sources, still survive under the shade of innumerable interpretations. Seeing in Pakistan, a viewer may speculate the presence, power and pull of prayer bead, which further alludes to the frenzy, fanaticism, force we associate with the institution and attributions of faith. Like prayer beads that can be used for various religions a work of art can have diverse decoding in different cultures. Contrary to Siva’s mortuary connection of bird on his head; in Urdu tales, many a times an ordinary man is crowned a king, because of the bird, huma, landing on his head.

Siva’s work invites us to read multiple texts about identity, trauma, grief, carnage, of private, political – and ourselves through the eyes/ bodies of others: birds, fish, flowers – our loved ones. It is like the Islamic Republic comparing itself with Sri Lanka on a regular basis.

The author is an art critic based in Lahore