AmidstPlanets-3 (2002) Painting by Ved Nayar

‘In India when we began making art our focus was to define contemporary reality, which was neither looking backwards or looking westwards’.


Ved Nayar’s painting on view is about the place and its people seduced by commodification and growing consumerism. In this recent (2000) series, the artist, plays witness to the changing visual culture in India. Signs of mercantilism and globalisation that have impacted India in recent years in a big way invade our everyday living and artistic consciousness as well. The city, saturated with large billboards and advertisements, commercials, stickers and brand names, mindlessly cluttered, makes overt gestures of instant seduction at the viewers/consumers.

Besides, the experience of Delhi as a mega city is primarily grounded in the overpowering presence of the automobile- endless rows of cars, anytime and everywhere. Ved’s pun here is on the oft-used phrase, ‘city on the move’.By covering the entire surface with the simplified car form, Ved obliquely asks whether densification and overgrowth that has populated the grid of the city is a sign of progress.

The conceptual self-portrait that Ved evolved in his early years of practice has become a trademark image that acquires new identities and plays different roles in his work. The ever-expanding construction of flyovers to overcome the gridlocked city traffic and the city’s rage for newer and newer cars has been shown as the entangled locks of the portrait. The elongated face with eyes fixed to the West is impressed with signs of urban culture-the domination of electronic media, status emblems, beauty stickers, brand names- the Americanisation of India with Coca cola and Pepsi. The slim and tall, long legged beauty of the Miss World and Universe contests symbolises the seeking of celebrity status while western norms of beauty get enforced in the Indian context. The multi-layered work evokes various registers of meaning, from the over-stimulated minds of Indians today, their new found aspirations set up within the globalisation agenda, and the attendant pressures, mindless urbanisation and life style changes, with the all-too-apparent signs of mismatch.

The artist does not register a complaint against the contemporary situation nor does he pass moral judgement. Instead Ved posits the signs of an import culture that has replaced the indigenous past via frequent travel, mobility, open market policies and a global dream. Against this dreamy coloured picture of acquisitive power and glitter, Ved seems to address the ambiguity attached to the notion of ‘contemporary relevance.’

Roobina Karode, New Delhi, February 2005

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