Sivasubramaniam Kajendran | Garbha Griha: Sanctum Sanctorum

Sivasubramaniam Kajendran paints on vibrant yellow canvases, his often solitary figures floating in their own monochromatic universes. This yellow, emblematic of the Sri Lankan flag, immediately points to an interest in national identity and its formation. The dark blue hues of his subjects’ skin create a stark contrast from the warm shades of his backdrops, as if bathed in moonlight in the middle of a sunny day. 

Clothed in white flowing gowns and sheer drapery, Kajendran cloaks his figures in a spectrum of opacity. These subjects, frozen in upwards motion–flying, floating, lifting–are as ephemeral as they are permanent. In the uniformity of their faces and in the layered blue-tones of their bodies, his subjects can be understood within the context of Kajendran’s lived experiences amidst the Sri Lankan Civil War. Those who survived and the ones who didn’t, the ones who went missing, have all been enshrined within these paintings.

Like his visual juxtapositions of light and dark, night and day, Kajendran’s body of work is a study of dichotomies. For him, the weight of history’s tragedies can be transformed into the lightness of the future’s possibilities, and death is the first step on the path to rebirth. He explores the natural cycle of life through the lens of mother and child.

Throughout history and across religions, depictions of femininity and motherhood have been used as iconographs of freedom, strength, and rebirth. ‘Bharatmata’, an anchoring figure of the Indian freedom struggle conceptualized the country as mother; one who holds up all. Hera, the Greek goddess of marriage, is as much a fertility goddess as she is a fearsome guardian. Themes of motherhood are constantly interwoven with associations of strength and prowess–the mother is inextricable from the protector. 

Kajendran’s work builds upon these contextual foundations of centuries of iterations of the symbolic mother. Many of these paintings inspire visual associations of Madonna and child. Other paintings--with their birds, flowers, and butterflies--allude to Mother Earth.

In this vein, it feels only fitting that the artist’s desire to find hope in the aftermath of tragedy is achieved through the repeated characterization of the mother. The unwavering cycle of life and death is at play throughout his work–yet instead of living in the past, he finds joy in the delicate present and the promise of the future.