καιρός remembered

Colour Speaks Politics

Captions accompanying exhibited artworks can be enlightening, but all too often they degenerate into a maze of pompous, convoluted phrasing. Here is an example from the caption accompanying Hasseena Suresh’s work:

“Unlike the chronological border of figures glorified in the narratives of mythology, Hasseena traces the genealogy of glorification in the moments of ordinary life. (…..) The figures, devoid of immaculate ideals, are storm-touched beings, bearing the delicate fissures, softened ridges and chromatic bruises that chart the seismic shifts in an inner life.”

What a relief it is to then read what Hasseena herself has to say about her series of ceramic heads:

“Colour Speaks Politics exposes how colour operates as power. In India, colour is not aesthetic; it is a system. It decides who belongs, who is mocked, who is erased, and who is allowed dignity. Rooted in personal memory of witnessing casual violence against dark skin, this series confronts how caste, class, religion, widowhood, and political identity are disciplined through colour. (…..) My sculptures disrupt the hierarchy that turns bodies into borders and skin into stigma. Here, colour is not symbolic. It is structural violence. And this work names it.”

And this is what Hasseena has to say about her installation The World I See:

“The World I See consists of seventeen pillar-like forms that move between obelisks, lingams, mountains, and city silhouettes. Playful in colour and surface, the installation quietly reflects on structures of power shaped by memory and emotion. Each pillar rises from a charred, heart or vulva-shaped base, wound and womb, revealing the interdependence of masculine and feminine energies. Together, the forms suggest that power is never singular, but always grounded, relational, and sustained by what lies beneath.”

Hasseena’s captions are clear and just as powerful as her sculptures.

Photos of the week: Hasseena Suresh, Ceramic and scorched wood, from her series ‘Colour Speaks Politics’, and ‘The World I See’, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India 2026