Advertisement
X

Portrait Of An Artist

Sundaram, the nephew of the legendary Amrita Sher-Gil, plays God with his family.

Sundaram juggles his cast of four characters so that they end up in the same picture—defying the rules of time, space—alongside or behind her father, now old, faded and despondent, or bang in the middle of her own paintings, like an apparition.

The line between illusion and reality has all but vanished in these digital photomontages that are the result of a strange collaborative venture between Amrita’s father, Umrao Singh Sher-Gil, and his grandson Sundaram. Taken from the Sher-Gil family archive, many of the original pictures have been taken by Umrao Singh; some are self-portraits. Interestingly, Sundaram has cast himself into this "re-enactment" of the Sher-Gil family drama. You could describe them as encounters of the close kind. Mixing memory with desire, past and present, Sundaram provides the reader-viewer an intimate portrait of his aunt and family.

Show comments
US