Art Today 28 july 2025
VP. Vasuhan: Memory, Movement, and the Meaning of Family
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Born in the culturally rich regions between South India and northern Sri Lanka, VP. Vasuhan carries with him a history shaped by migration, memory, and the need to preserve identity. His work is steeped in the dual forces of tradition and change—an artist who doesn’t just make images but builds living testaments to where he comes from. Vasuhan’s art bridges generations, geographies, and philosophies. With a formal training in art and a deep personal investment in the idea of home and family, he offers not only visuals but experiences. Through performance, sculpture, pigment, and installation, he invites us into a deeper conversation—not just about heritage, but about what binds us together as humans.
His 2025 exhibition KOODU KUDUMPAM – Joint Family is a deeply personal and culturally resonant project that honors the strength, rhythm, and fragility of the extended family unit. It’s less about nostalgia and more about preserving a truth that is slowly vanishing from rural landscapes. |
KOODU KUDUMPAM: Ties of the Heart
The exhibition’s title comes from the Tamil phrase “Koodu Kudumpam,” which loosely translates to “joint family.” It’s a term that once defined village life across much of South Asia—a life where cousins, aunts, grandparents, and grandchildren all shared a single household, shaped by shared meals, chores, and traditions.
In Ties of the Heart, Vasuhan turns this idea into a visual and spatial experience. His paintings and sculptures carry scenes many who’ve grown up in rural communities will instantly recognize: elders on the veranda, children playing barefoot in the dust, pots simmering in open-air kitchens. But it’s not a romanticized look back. The work acknowledges change—the move from villages to cities, the shrinking of families, the loss of oral tradition.
There’s quiet reverence in the brushwork and earthy palette, but also a deliberate tension. Some pieces suggest absence—an empty chair, a broken thread, a path leading out of the frame. Vasuhan is documenting a social shift, not just remembering one.
Each canvas works like a portal, pulling the viewer into shared spaces that once held many lives. The materials—organic in feel and often rough to the touch—echo this: clay, charcoal, handmade pigments, natural fibers. Together, they suggest something rooted, handmade, and lived-in.
In Ties of the Heart, Vasuhan turns this idea into a visual and spatial experience. His paintings and sculptures carry scenes many who’ve grown up in rural communities will instantly recognize: elders on the veranda, children playing barefoot in the dust, pots simmering in open-air kitchens. But it’s not a romanticized look back. The work acknowledges change—the move from villages to cities, the shrinking of families, the loss of oral tradition.
There’s quiet reverence in the brushwork and earthy palette, but also a deliberate tension. Some pieces suggest absence—an empty chair, a broken thread, a path leading out of the frame. Vasuhan is documenting a social shift, not just remembering one.
Each canvas works like a portal, pulling the viewer into shared spaces that once held many lives. The materials—organic in feel and often rough to the touch—echo this: clay, charcoal, handmade pigments, natural fibers. Together, they suggest something rooted, handmade, and lived-in.
Koodu Kudumpam Performance: A Living Offering
On August 2nd, Vasuhan extended his vision into a live performance in the garden of Espace Marland. Koodu Kudumpamthe performance was not merely a reenactment, but a multi-sensory invocation. Using natural elements—water, sand, fire, air, and space—he created a moving, breathing ritual that blurred the lines between art and ceremony.
Participants, spanning multiple generations, dressed in half-traditional clothing, became both performers and symbols. As they moved through space, they carried clay pots, scattered turmeric, traced lines with charcoal, and unspooled threads across bodies and ground.
Each object and gesture held layered meanings:
Rather than lament what’s lost, Vasuhan’s performance asked: What do we still carry? What can we pass on?
Participants, spanning multiple generations, dressed in half-traditional clothing, became both performers and symbols. As they moved through space, they carried clay pots, scattered turmeric, traced lines with charcoal, and unspooled threads across bodies and ground.
Each object and gesture held layered meanings:
- Water stood for nourishment and ancestral ties.
- Sand recalled land and identity.
- Fire marked destruction and renewal.
- Air was the invisible current of language and sound.
- Space became the spiritual container that held it all.
Rather than lament what’s lost, Vasuhan’s performance asked: What do we still carry? What can we pass on?
A Place to Remembe
For those who walked through the exhibition or sat with the performance, KOODU KUDUMPAM wasn’t simply about one artist’s past. It was about all of ours. The shared meals, the verandas, the smells, the sounds, the silences—we’ve all come from somewhere held together by a kind of everyday magic.
By grounding his work in cultural specificity and then opening it outward through universal themes of family, loss, and continuity, Vasuhan creates something rare. His work doesn’t preach. It invites.
And at a time when speed, mobility, and individualism dominate, this reminder feels urgent: the heart remembers what the calendar forgets.
By grounding his work in cultural specificity and then opening it outward through universal themes of family, loss, and continuity, Vasuhan creates something rare. His work doesn’t preach. It invites.
And at a time when speed, mobility, and individualism dominate, this reminder feels urgent: the heart remembers what the calendar forgets.
Exhibition Info:
- KOODU KUDUMPAM – Joint Family
- Exhibition of paintings and sculptures by VP. Vasuhan
- July 30 – August 16, 2025
- Vernissage & Performance: August 2 at Espace Marland, Tonnerre, France
- www.vasuhan.com
- Open Wednesday to Saturday, 10 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. / 2 p.m. – 6 p.m.