At Akara Contemporary, Mumbai, a large-scale oil painting comes into view. Subhakar Tadi’s Window of Prophetic News stands out for the stark blue wall-like structure looming large on canvas. A small white window is carved into it, offering a glimpse of a man reading a newspaper. The figure seems relatable—he represents all of us, who feel the violence of events happening across the world so deeply. News of wars and forced displacement makes its way into our homes, becoming part of discussions over meals. Zoom out from the wall, and an array of gunmen become visible, inching closer to the structure. It’s a layered visual, forcing us to come to terms with our selective empathy. Somehow we have trained ourselves to be more sensitive to violence happening in distant lands but tend to look away from everyday acts of aggression happening in our immediate vicinity.
Elsewhere in the frame, other figures walk by calmly, indifferent to events from both distant lands and our daily lives. “In the corner of the composition, barely perceptible, a dog watches. Aware, present, undeceived, the only figure who sees the scene for what it is, unburdened by the peculiarly human capacity for selective sight,” states the curatorial note. This work is part of Tadi’s solo show, Writings on the Wall, on view at the gallery till 14 August. These large oil paintings are accompanied by a small group of watercolours and charcoal drawings.
For the artist, born in Andhra Pradesh and trained as a printmaker, the wall is a sign of cultural continuity, which connects us with prehistoric times and ancient civilisations. Tadi considers the wall as the oldest place where humans left their mark—the most ancient form of power and protest. However, as the curatorial note mentions, the histories he draws on are more recent—the Berlin Wall covered over decades in the testimonies, the Israeli-West Bank barrier layered with murals, the US-Mexico border that has drawn artists, migrants, and cameras in equal measure…“each of these walls bears its own record of institutional power”.
“In contemporary urban spaces, it becomes a space where the shiny promises of development clash with the lived realities of common people,” says the 46-year-old, who is inspired by artists like Banksy. The democratic nature of the architectural element has always appealed to him. “It can turn into a canvas for a kid on the street and also for artists,” adds Tadi. In his studio, he uses the wall as both the subject and the method in his oil paintings. He creates photorealistic— almost cinematic—urban facades. The artist then adds his own style of graffiti or visual narrative on the walls in his works. The human figures are scaled down to magnify the wall and the messaging on it.
The paintings in the series trace their roots to Tadi’s 2007-08 black-and-white series, titled Dissolution, in which he focused on figures who lay on railway platforms or on footpaths. While doing the sketches, he couldn’t help but notice the walls in the background, which featured scribblings and drawings by children, who lived on the streets. “The wall was part of the peripheral view, as they say in photography—elements from the background, which also come into the frame,” says Tadi. The Dissolution series was followed by a series on broken windows as well.
“Then I came across an old image of a political meeting, in which someone was speaking and people were sitting all around him. I superimposed that image on the wall that I had painted on canvas,” elaborates Tadi. There were two kinds of visual layerings in the work—my painting of a public image, and the imagery of the landscape with clouds and trees and a man walking alone. “That lone man stood for me and many others, who choose to stand apart from the crowd that is being manipulated and brainwashed,” he says.
Besides the layering in his paintings, the colour palette also stands out. If the Window of Prophetic News stands out for its blue hues, the wall in the Black Painter series is pitch dark. In the latter, he looks at public statues of national figures, some of which are prominently displayed in the city’s landmarks and others that have been relegated to an ignored space. “The point is never the idol itself, but the ideology it was built to hold. A statue, Tadi came to understand, could be broken and rebuilt; the ideology it carries cannot,” states the curatorial note.
One can’t help but ask if he ever plans to take these paintings out of the gallery space to the streets—the very public space that he draws inspiration from. “I have thought of exhibiting these works either outside abandoned buildings or inside them. There are several strains of thought running through my mind around this, but I am still waiting for the right moment,” says Tadi.