Cultural (Re)Treats: Vivan Sundaram on Artistic Authorship and the Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation
Recorded on 02 October 2021
A retreat, says artist Vivan Sundaram as he reflects on the prolific Kasauli Art Centre (1976–91), carries within it multiple meanings. Literally, it can be defined as a sanctuary—a place to which one goes to withdraw from the world. But it can also be seen as a treat—a thing, place or experience that delights and gives pleasure. It is this idea, he asserts, that makes the experience of living in a retreat memorable, in the way that people recount the formal and the informal.
The Kasauli Art Centre, a radical space for cross-disciplinary creative and intellectual practice, emerged from Sundaram’s own artistic philosophy. Described by Sundaram as being “anarchist,” it is inherently collaborative and questions the idea that an artist is the singular author of their work. This understanding is what made the Kasauli Art Centre the retreat that it was. The Centre also set the foundation for the ideology that underpins the work of the Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation (SSAF), an organisation based in Delhi that was set up by Vivan and his sister Navina in 2016. According to the website,
“SSAF seeks to enable conjunctions of artistic and cultural practice that deal with historical memory, and to build expectations for the future. It commits itself to advancing creative independence for art that is founded on freedom of expression, and which is secular. It is committed to working in solidarity with initiatives addressing concerns of the marginalised; and supporting alternative and heterodox practices.”
The SSAF can be seen as the institutional successor to a long history of radical cultural work undertaken by Sundaram, in conjunction with several friends and colleagues.
In the second segment of this special two-part episode of ASAP Cast, Vivan Sundaram speaks to Ketaki Varma about the eponymous Journal of Arts and Ideas, the setting up of the SSAF, and the politics that drives his cultural and artistic work. He gives us a preview of one of SSAF’s key upcoming initiatives—the reinvention of the Kasauli Art Centre in the form of a new infrastructure named the SSAF Kasauli Art Project, or SKAP, which will conceptualise and host workshops, performances and residencies as extended projects.
(Featured Image: Seminar on Marxism and Aesthetics. Kasauli Art Centre, 1979. Image courtesy of Vivan Sundaram.)
Revisit the first part of this interview here.
To know more about the objectives of the Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation, click here.
For the first time, a comprehensive book on the Kasauli Art Centre is being produced by the co-publishing initiative SSAF-Tulika Books. Written by Belinder Dhanoa, the book is due to be released in 2022. To know more, click here.
