Since time immemorial, a piece of art or literature has carried the power to unsettle the authorities, to shake the hierarchy, break the complacency of the world, and often bring peace in the most unexpected ways. Be it Picasso’s anti-war painting ‘Guernica’ or Ernest Hemingway’s ‘Farewell to Arms’, they were reiterations of the devastation and futility of wars.
From the Russian Civil War, World Wars I and II, to the Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Gaza, or the Myanmar Civil War, the brunt of this barbaric power play has always been borne by the innocent ones. Though these atrocities make it to the newspapers’ front page, to the TV news channels, to social media, with a flip, a scroll, we can evade this extremely triggering content. Is it because it is happening in someone else’s backyard? Or is it because we are powerless?
It is unfathomable to bring even the slightest change in the situation. But art, a piece of literature, or a poem, a painting, or a photograph, holds enormous potential to disturb the status quo, the structure, the hierarchy, the government. Some are so powerful and explicit that they have been banned. Artists and writers talk about replicating the angst, grief, outrage onto their canvases and sheets through strokes and words from which fierce colours of emotions ooze out and amorphous sentiments take forms.
AS Vijtharan, a writer who was born in Sri Lanka and came to Tamil Nadu as a refugee, has been carrying the memories of the Civil War. Intuitively understanding the pain and grief of the victims of war, the minorities, and scarred by the wounds of war, of having to live a life of displacement, devoid of proper living conditions, the mere thought of war is beyond perturbing for Vijitharan. He says he has been following the Palestinians’ issues for five years. “It’s more like our story.”
A friend’s death by suicide at a refugee camp in Tamil Nadu was the point that made him think resolutely of articulating the heart-wrenching grief. Among his other poignant works, his recent book, ‘Song of the Martyrs’, a translated version of his Tamil work ‘Marithor Paadalgal’, he says, is a compilation of the last words of the people who have been killed in the war.
As someone who was treated as an “illegal immigrant”, he says, “We don’t have the right to initiate movements; rather, writing poetry was his kind of retaliation and expression. A similar pain, a known grief, came rushing to his mind when he read Hiba Abu Nada’s last words before she was killed by the Israeli army: “Gaza’s night is dark apart from the glow of rockets, quiet apart from the sound of the bombs, terrifying apart from the comfort of prayer, black apart from the lights of the martyrs. Goodnight Gaza.”
It all started with this poem for Vijitharan.
Art, for him, is a way to understand other people and a medium to educate. “If art is not political, then it is used for the elite. When art came to common people, he says, art did not remain for the sake of art, but its purpose became understanding.”
The dregs of such ghastly crimes and wars that stain the history of humanity seep into the canvas of many artists. For Jitha Karthikeyan, it is almost an inconceivable thought to separate art and real life. For her, art is a “documentation of our times” and something that lives on, untouched by the ravages of time. “I am affected by the world I live in. In these volatile times where global political situations espouse hate founded on our differences, and nations go to war wiping out human lives mercilessly, the grief and angst through art becomes a social responsibility,” she shares. She adds that art then becomes a collective voice. “The voices of all those whose lives have been shattered by these conflicts.”
Her painting, ‘The Last Song of a Fragmented World’, effectively replicates the inefficacy of human beings to stop the impending doom, the ruinous path humans have chosen, the grim reality of wars, the bane of development, which we call “evolution of the human race”.
Through her artwork, she translates the world that has been bifurcated by wars, power, and differences. As she explains, “Nothing remains except the rubble; the landscape distorted by countless conflicts of rage until we know not if a tree or a monument stood there once, humming the last song of a fragmented world.”
Explaining her work, where a self-portrait is a quintessential element, her words echo as loud as the strokes, she says, “What has civilisation finally come to mean?” This can be interpreted as an introspection, as a scrutiny — a constant reminder that her emotions cannot be inseparable from the world she lives in. Jitha adds, “My visual vocabulary sometimes consists of the socio-economic and political aspects of the world I live in now, often seeming to be a social commentary that raises questions.”
Trotsky Marudu Maruthappan is another artist whose works are closely linked with the socio-political happenings in and around the country. Someone who has grown up seeing anti-war, anti-Nazi posters, and was introduced to Russian posters and illustrations, the brutal images of history were etched in his mind from a very young age. His paintings were an offshoot of his close interactions with war-oppressed communities and people in the war, whom he calls martyrs. He says the ground realities, the harrowing scenes of the Sri Lankan Civil War, the deaths and disappearances, the sight of mothers holding the photos of their dead sons, were powerful moments for him that he felt he needed to document them through his paintings and books such as ‘Maveer Nadukargal’ and ‘Irandu Seyaligal’. He says, “For an artist, silence is impossible; how can one who breathes art remain without expressing himself?” He has been an artist of the people. In his words, “I will be with my fellow citizens through my art.”
Meanwhile, Vasugi Bhaskar, editor at Neelam Publication, alludes to the wars around the world, and says that his solidarity is in trying to understand them — the discrimination, their geopolitics, their voices. Vasugi asserts that his work itself is a way of protest. He says, “I am just trying to replicate a part of life — the events happening in my life.” He goes on, “Without politics, you cannot create anything.” While drawing parallels with the situation in the home country, he says his work is capturing his immediate environment: the oppression of the Dalits, the apathy of the world, and their ignorance when it comes to standing with them.
Vasugi believes that art is a space of freedom; it should be able to democratise. He, however, points out the situation in India and rues that artists have been shunned when their works condemn the system. Their films are banned, their works are shrouded. “If we relax restrictions, many artists would come up with their own voices,” he suggests.
Indian artists have responded to wars in every possible way — through exhibitions, street art, posts on social media, campaigns, and many others. Artist Bhagwan S Chavan says that amid the mayhem, he wants to carry an optimistic note — a visual language that appeals to everyone. While intense emotions are stirring inside the artist, he says they are expressed just then and there in a fraction of seconds, “and it is there on the canvas.” In the face of wars and deaths, he says, “Art in its true sense has the power to address the challenges we face today. It inspires, spreads peace, offers perspectives that go beyond conflict and falsehood.”
As each artist and writer has put forth a wide array of emotions through colours, fiction and non-fiction, they are all trying to record the world we are living in. As Trotsky says, “Across the world, artists are pouring out their voices, their grief, their rage, each in their own way, weaving together a collective cry for unity against the forces of injustice.”