SUJITH S.N. | Archipelago: D-53 Defence Colony, New Delhi

18 March - 1 April 2017

The works in the show are conversations on the city and everyday realities which Sujith has been engaged in for a few years now, but here he sets about articulating them in a more nuanced and abstract manner. The city is no longer the subject but is a given, the matrix upon which his abstract ruminations are constructed. Architectural forms give way to vast empty spaces, or alternatively dreams-capes, where the individual is seen lost in the act of doing nothing. Like the city made of numerous individual citizens, the archipelago emerges as a metaphor for society, as an entity in itself while simultaneously being as a collection of bodies.

Sujith speaks of the contradictory emotional state that many of us inhabit, of being attracted to something and yet fearing it, as determinate to our choices and beliefs. He sees his own interest in the hundreds of property advertisements in papers promising a utopian abode set in the middle of a green paradise, as a myth that as a community we chose to believe in; a notion that is fueled by the realities of living in a city such a Mumbai. He admits the city makes even small everyday acts, of standing in queue or walking, a political gesture. Thus, whenever human figures appear in his works, they appear as though alone and lost in their own worlds. This quietness pervades the atmosphere, perhaps as a clever comment on the lost voices on individuals in today’s societies, or an honest introspection of human condition in today’s rapidly urbanizing world.