Radio Show Me What Democracy Looks Like – Episode 4

In this fourth episode of Radio Show Me What Democracy Looks Like, we focus on representations of religious coexistence in the visual culture of democracy, K.G. Subramanyan’s 2013 mural War of the Relics and the sharing of Indigenous spirituality and warmth.

Religious Coexistence in Democratic Visual Culture

K.G. Subramanyan’s War of the Relics

Measuring 2.7 by 10.9 meters, The War of the Relics (2013)—K. G. Subramanyan’s final mural before his death in June 2016—is a rare and ambitious feat of the human spirit. Painted by an eighty-eight-year-old artist in a spurt of intense activity soon after major surgery, it is also charged with a sense of urgency. There is, at first glance, no obvious narrative. The painting appears to be a jumble of images—heraldic motifs, icons, hybrid creatures, decorative embellishments—some familiar, some foreign, some mythical, others imagined by the artist; yet as we plough through this bewildering mass a pattern emerges, and with it a story of conflict. The chaotic composition, the motifs, and the title help us to recognize that it is a story of warring tribes, of sectarian hostilities, and religious intolerance. They also suggest that this war is being fought with medieval mindsets and modern tools, and that it is only one episode in a long, dark history of human confrontation.

• R. Siva Kumar in The documenta 14 Reader

Meeting K.G. Subramanyan in Santiniketan in Exergue on documenta 14

Musical Outro: Howard Gospel Choir ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’

The original song is a hymn with lyrics by James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) written in the late 1800s and set to music by his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson (1873–1954) in 1905.

Footnote on Sharing Indigenous Spirituality and Warmth

My friends organized a trip to me to Canada where the First Nation people were waiting for me to take care of me. They warmed me with a blanket and protection, hiding me. And I ended up staying in a longhouse with a very wise man who was then starting the process of making the traditional Indian spirituality alive again. And he started examining me because they didn’t really know what kind of indigenous white people are coming. They are saying that they are indigenous and so on. So they had to examine me.And then my grandfather’s education came very, very well to use. And we had a month everyday conversations with my host man in the longhouse where we talked about indigenous spirituality which happened to be exactly the same values as my grandfather had told me. And we went into sweat lodges regularly. And the end of that was that I was then adopted to seven different First Nation people in BC, Canada. And I’m very, very happy that this young woman [Linnea Dick] who comes with a blanket honors me here. She belongs to one of these groups. And there is also another young, beautiful First Nation lady [Candice Hopkins] who is also involved in this process. And I’m very, very thankful for them that they are here. That blanket really, really, really warmed me and protected me.

• Niillas Somby