Artist Sovan Kumar’s works on show at Kochi use trucks as a symbol to explores political and personal struggles

Sovan Kumar’s painting May First at Marina Beach
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The truck is pink this time, 

Fluorescent, absurd, 

A joke rolling through the streets,

On its back, 

Men made of stone, 

Green and cold, 

Push against the air, 

Their muscles taut, frozen in the eternal effort

To move what will not move. 

These lines, part of a poem, May First at Marina Beach by MD Muthukumaraswamy, accompany Sovan Kumar’s painting of a pink truck laden with the weight of the ‘world’s struggle’ foregrounding the quiet struggle of an individual trying to live. It is a picture of the installed public sculpture, DP Roy Choudhury’s Triumph of Labour, at Marina Beach, Chennai, If it is the struggle-laden trunk here, then there is the truck in War and Peace (Galwan Valley) where it is a sort of bridge between war and peace — flanked by soldiers and monks, and then the truck carrying Oxygen for All travelling with oxygen, the danger of combustion ever present. The paintings are as thought-provoking as they are unsettling. 

Before and After Jallianwala Bagh
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Haunting Cargoes, on at Durbar Hall Art Gallery, showcases the recent works of Sovan Kumar is unsettling because of the starkness of the messaging. The past, present and future find expression in these not-so diminutive works (most of them are 108 inches by 54 inches) that are attention seekers in a complimentary way. At first glance the works look kitsch and bright, as if merely for the eyes. But on a closer look, accompanied by Muthukumaraswamy’s word-pictures are a pause for thought. The personal and political find equal space in the works of the artist who trained as a ceramist. Hailing from Odisha, he is the regional secretary, Lalit Kala Akademi, Chennai.  

The installation, Beds for Bedless People
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The political because we get glimpses of a nation grappling with its twin preoccupations – tradition/past and progress/future, while trying to negotiate the ‘modern’ present. The choice of truck as a symbol is clever and interesting. It changes the way one sees a truck — as a mere vehicle of commerce. The trucks on the canvas appear to be moving, in a constant state of flux. Moving toward what, we don’t know. Perhaps hope, resilience and the promise of a better, prosperous tomorrow for the nation? Sovan Kumar provides no answers, he shows the picture and suggests the possibilities. But he demands that you look at the big picture and be provoked enough to think. 

An installation by Sovan Kumar at Durbar Hall Art Gallery 
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From the Farmland to the Parliament, The Nature Never Rolls Back, Before and After Jallianwala Bagh, Untitled Digital Waste, and The Ever-flowing Legacy of Kashmir are some of the other paintings that use the truck as the carrier of preoccupations. There are also terracotta and mixed media sculptures (My Leader Our Leader), which reinforce the artist’s practice as being deeply enmeshed in the political.  Especially striking is the installation of painted terracotta sculptures of sleeping homeless people, Beds for Bedless People. 

Haunting Cargoes at Durbar Hall Art Gallery concludes on April 20.