Sundaram's image of a wounded citizenry

Vivan Sundaram's last work, a photo-based installation, speaks to people about the way we think of pain and endurance

- Avantika Bhuyan

At Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai, a series of photographs, Shelter, comes into view.

In the eight images on display, you can see a person in varied states of confinement in a box. In one, he is lying on the ground, with his body partially enclosed by a diaphanous enclosure, and in another, he is sitting within a broken wooden partition with one foot out. There seems to be a tussle between ideas of confinement and liberation, both on physical and mental levels. In each image, the figure responds to confinement—twisting, bending, gazing outwards to express the pain and resistance stored within. The fact that you can see through the enclosures is quite symbolic, to my mind, of the complicity of society in the perpetration of pain.