Vivan Sundaram
Installation view of the Sher-Gil Archive 1995–97
The ‘Sher-Gil Archive’ 1995–97 details the story of Vivan Sundaram’s family at the turn of the twentieth century in India and Europe. It is a commemoration, a work of memory, a consideration of early portraiture and an inquiry into identity and the meaning of the bonds that connect family heritage to race and nationality.
Sundaram’s choice of material is primarily archival and familial. The images are drawn from the rich photographic archive of the family patriarch, Umrao Singh Sher-Gil – the artist’s grandfather and a Sanskrit scholar who photographed himself and his family consistently between 1894 and 1947, and is one of India’s earliest photographers. Umrao Singh Sher-Gil and his Hungarian wife, Marie Antoinette Gottesman, lived both a cosmopolitan, urban life in Europe and a rural existence in Northern India. The challenges and complexities of their lives are alluded to in this series of 54 family portraits and in the eloquent and insightful letters by Umrao’s daughter Amrita (Vivan’s aunt), documenting her fraught relationship with identity and nation. These notions resonate well into late-twentieth-century India and continue to be rich subject matter for contemporary art.
Each of the four light-boxes presents an image of each member of the Sher-Gil family with their names etched onto the glass cover. The images are of the photographer, Umrao Singh Sher-Gil; the matriarch, Marie Antoinette; and their daughters Amrita (who became an important modernist painter) and Indira, the artist’s mother. ‘The Sher-Gil Archive’ unfolds a narrative journey that weaves between India and Europe and between colonial and postcolonial worlds. It is a poignant evocation of the life and circumstance of a family at the turn of the twentieth century.
Interviews with Vivan Sundaram
Vivan Sundaram talks about Amrita Sher-Gil | 10:57
TateShots Issue 2 - Amrita Sher-Gil | 4:40
Vivan Sundaram on the life story of Amrita Sher-Gil | 4:50
The Gallery's Research Library collects contemporary Asian and Pacific resources and the Gallery's collection is available online.
