'Let us build ourselves a city and tower in its top of heavan', 7.8' x 5', dry pastel on paper

Rebuilding the Babel Tower

Hyderabad based young artist, Sujith SN speaks about his latest work, ‘Let us build ourselves a city and a tower in its top of Heaven’. He says that, through this work he seeks the possibilities of rebuilding a lost dream; the hope of universal humanity.

Change is inevitable. And time, place and growth are factors directing it. An artist being sensitive to his surroundings sees a reflection of these in his works and may be that’s why one always varies his demands from it. and one grows with each work. Thus each work in itself talks about the time and the context it is being done.

  The work I am going to talk about is called “let us build ourselves a city and a tower in its top of heaven.” it’s a continuation of my earlier works. I have used allusion from Bruegel’s Tower of Babel. Bruegel took the reference from the genesis chapter 10. The concept talks about humans making a tower and said: come let us build for ourselves a city and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name. And the lord came down to see the city and the tower. He created amongst them a confusion of tongue, so that they may not understand each other’s speech.”

  I took the story and placed it in a different context, the context of present. It is a utopian view. According to the story, the tower of heaven will never get over because god created different languages disconnecting everyone. But I have shown the possibility to rebuild the dream. We no longer are disconnected; we speak a universal language to communicate. Here I am questioning the behavior of human beings, about their confidence and desires. In this attempt I have tried to show metaphorically how hard attempts are being made to access the heavenly life

  Apart from the concept, format also plays a crucial role in my work. it not just supports the idea am working but when placed in a space creates an ambience which further frames the work. The process of working starts with a lot of many sketches and scribbles. A lot of these assimilate resulting in the final work. Some unknown forms of architecture, machines, and archetypal images in the foreground and the mystic sky create an ambiguous atmosphere.

  It is not just sketching-a routine I always go through, but also the draughts man course done previously that helps me a lot in arriving at such kind of mystic forms and spaces in my work. Even in this work, I made a list of images and I took photographs and sketched a lot of different huge construction sites. I have also referred to social realistic works for the illusion of space and figures.