Biennale artist K.M. Madhusudhanan, whose charcoal drawings at Aspinwall House have captured the fancy of viewers, is now training his creative eyes on the great rebellion of 1921 in Malabar.
“It is a great tragedy that happened in Kerala and it is indeed sad that there has been no work of art, a serious film or a public monument on that. The premeditated mass murder of 70 people has been more or less obliterated from the public psyche,” laments the Alappuzha-born artist whose film ‘Bioscope’ (2008) won the national film award.
An avid lover of history, Mr. Madhusudhanan wonders why this great human tragedy has not found a place in artistic expression in Kerala and plans to make a composite work of art based on the 1921 rebellion. “There will be a small video installation, a series of charcoal drawings and a sculptural installation on 1921. I will complete the project after returning from the Venice Biennale,” says the Delhi-based artist.
His charcoal drawings, ‘Logic of Disappearance’ on the “disappearance of yesteryear values”, now on display at the biennale, besides the series of drawings on the 1921 uprising would be what will be on display at the Venice Biennale, he says.
The ‘Logic of Disappearance’ cobbles together a narrative, not unfamiliar to the Keralite viewer, on the Communist-Marxist period in the State’s early years. “When you read it all together, it sheds light into the socio-political context of the early decades, as the movement sought to brighten up Keralites’ path to social progress, and also reminds us of the change that has been brought about by its tryst with power politics,” says the artist.
The questions it raises pertain to politics and knowledge, power and knowledge and the like.
