A few feet into the entrance, opposite a restaurant serving Punjabi cuisine and a high-end fashion store at Phoenix MarketCity, stands an art installation of Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (formerly, Victoria Terminus).
The large-scale wooden work is a replica of the Mumbai landmark, except for LED timers stuck all over its surface, and a 30-degree tilt — an attempt by the artist “to look underneath at the foundations of the iconic structure to examine its traces of unwritten narratives and shifts in historical perspectives”. The artwork is the newest addition to the list of around 15 original artworks — all installed as part of ArtC, a non-profit programme to take art to the public — at the mall.
“I hope the Victoria Terminus becomes a landmark of Chennai too,” says its creator, T.V. Santhosh, with a laugh, at the official launch of the artwork (a contribution by Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai). The event was followed by an interaction between Santhosh and Preeti Garg, founder of Gallery Veda.
Excerpts from the interaction:
Tell us about the very first piece you made.
It takes me back several years… We used to live by the coast in Kerala, and I loved the subtle variance in colour between the lighter upper layer of the sand and the darker and moister lower layer. As a child, I made innumerable doodles on the sand, all of which got wiped off by Nature at some point. I started using water colours in Class V, and moved to oil colours in Class IX, when a friend gifted me a box of paint bottles. While it’s difficult to recall the first piece, I hold a wonderful nostalgic memory of drawing on sand.
Many of your works use a technique that looks like the negative image of a photo. What’s the story behind that?
My work has gone through several phases. When I was studying in College of Fine Arts, Thrissur, my pieces were more about social reconstruction, and so on. Outside the campus, I was involved in political socialist movements. And inside, we were asked to be creative and imaginative. So it was an oscillation between extremes, and it was necessary to find a balance between the two. The concepts changed when I moved to Shantiniketan (where he learnt to sculpt), and later to Baroda and Mumbai.
At some point in 2000, I began looking at black-and-white photos of war and violence to explore the question: Who are the ultimate victims? I did a lot of monochromatic paintings, until I got my hands on a computer in 2003. I started playing around with historical photographs using Photoshop. One day, I accidently turned a photograph negative while editing. It was a photo of a protest in America, with a lot of people and security guards. I realised that in the negative image, one couldn’t make out where it was happening. The image, all of a sudden, became universal. Anybody could relate to it.
Many of your works also talk about how the media projects war or terrorism.
Today, the experiences we have need not be direct in nature. Every day, we get up and see the paper, and the reports become a part of our subconscious. That’s why even a person who is sitting miles away from the conflict zones in Syria or Afghanistan can still relate to it. The issues deeply influence me as well; they come to me with an intense emotion.
Is the Victoria Terminus installation a result of such emotion?
The terrorist attack in Mumbai in 2008 affected me a lot. I am not socially active, so I wanted to communicate what I felt through what I do best — art.
If you look at history, the VT building represented a colonial power. It pumps life into the city. Mumbai is a city where people come to fulfil their dreams, and the building is the starting point. It marks their entrance to a new world. That also explains the title: The threshold into a dream.
There are small LED countdown timers fixed all over the installation.
On one hand, it can relate to the arrival and departure timings of the trains. On the other, it could indicate the countdown to one’s days on Earth, to a catastrophe... a giant explosion.
I wanted to make use of technology that reflects the language of our times. Timers are extensively used in objects — from clocks to bombs. The timer is an emblematic image of our times.
How long did it take for you to complete the piece?
I started work on it in 2009. I took photographs of the station, drew it on paper, took measurements, and began emulating the structure on wood. At some point, I got bored, as I was just copying the architecture. However, I went back to it, and made my interpretation of the structure with the tilt and timers.
