Artist’s murals focus on ‘wars around relics of religion’

Amid the raging controversy over intolerance, murals by eminent artist K G Subramanyan on display here has initiated a dialogue on how wars are being fought around “relics of religion”.

Art historian and curator R. Siva Kumar said though Padma Vibhushan awardee Subramanyan painted the series two years ago, they are relevant today, especially when India is engaged in a heated debate on intolerance.

“People are motivated to fight against one another. At some point, all religions were said to be one way of uniting people but now it’s the relics of religion around which wars are being fought and now here in India we have the controversy of intolerance,” Siva Kumar told at the inaugural of the exhibition titled ‘War of the Relics’ organised by The Seagull Foundation for the Arts at the Victoria Memorial Hall recently.

The exhibition was opened to the public on Friday and concludes on December 31. Siva Kumar said the paintings do not advocate what is right and what is wrong but provoke people to think “whether we all should be fighting on the basis of history”. However, he noted “art can flag issues but can’t solve them”.