Upvan (Garden)

  Carved Wood

Victim of success The images in Sumesh’s work mostly comes from his childhood memories of living in a small-town village in northern part of Kerala. This village and its surrounding areas, once known for scenic and serine cashew plantation, was later severely affected by extensive aerial spraying of Endosulfan, a controversial agrichemical which is now globally banned. The use of this high toxic chemical drastically altered the eco system of the region resulting in severe genetic abnormalities in human beings and animals. While Kerala celebrates its high export rate of quality cashews earning the state high amount of foreign exchange worth of millions annually, it does so by eradicating life and hope of hundreds of people in these villages. This is where the question of what constitutes success, who wins and loses in our pursuit for progress becomes a crucial factor in assessing what we call development. Sumesh’s attempt in these works is to further formulate these questions through myriad visual narratives. He does this by bringing in seemingly opposite images and narratives from different temporalities and spatiality's often resulting in paradoxes. And he call’s this paradox as “victim of success”.