On a sunny Monday afternoon in June, I reached the quaint little home-cum-studio of KM Madhusudhanan, the renowned artist and filmmaker known for his evocative artworks and National Award winning film Bioscope (2008). He would later tell me how this studio in Chalakudy, a river town in Thrissur, is an extension of his body and mind and how its physical proximity often indulges the restless artist in him.
I first came across his series, The Book of War, at the India Art Fair 2025, Delhi, and it has stayed with me since. The ink silhouettes, the blue and red hues, the skeletal structures, the weapons, the blood and gore — his drawings while being evidently inspired by the Mahabharata seemed all too similar to the harrowing world that has come crashing down all around us. While the allegories were obvious, Madhusudhanan’s drawings also seemed to urge the viewer to look inwards and confront the guilt and complicity one carries in times of conflict, war and genocide. It was this conversation — about The Book of War and its resonances — that had brought me to his doorstep that afternoon.
With a warm welcome, Madhusudhanan gave me a tour of what can only be described as a Marxist dreamscape — shelves spilling over with books, walls adorned with paintings, and sculptures peeking from corners. On the left wall was Fra Angelico’s The Annunciation, depicting Archangel Gabriel informing Virgin Mary that she is to be the mother of Christ. On the opposite wall was Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Tower of Babel, a painted rendition of the famous biblical story of the same name. From these walls, I deduced Madhusudhanan’s fascination towards the ‘epic’ and its influences in his art and life. Much like many before him, Madhusudhanan has attempted to collapse the distance between the ‘epic’ and man by democratising the way we approach such texts.
As I flipped through his massive volumes of Mahabharata, he asked if I had read the epic. I shrugged my shoulders and told him, unconvincingly, that I would get to it one day. Ever the storyteller, he ardently narrated a tale from Mahabharata of Iravan, Arjuna’s son. Before being sacrificed for victory in the Kurukshetra war, Iravan presents his final wish to be married before his death. As nobody agrees to marry a man who would be dead the next day, Krishna transforms into his female form, Mohini. He marries Iravan and consummates the marriage. “Can you believe the existence of a godly transgender character in the Mahabharata? Lord Krishna no less! ” Madhusudhanan exclaimed amusingly.
This was the perfect segue into his new series, The Book of War, inspired by the Mahabharata. “If you approach these epic texts as a reader rather than as a follower, you can observe how it is replete with violence and war. If you were to read the Old Testament, most of the text talks about murder or some degree of violence. German playwright Bertolt Brecht had a wonderful compilation of images from World War II coupled with poems and hymns that poignantly talks about the omnipresence of violence in the world,” Madhusudhanan told me. It is this book, he said, that made him revisit the Mahabharata, which encompasses every imaginable human experience.
He went on to add how war then becomes an integral feature of the human experience. Mahabharata is a crucial reminder of how the success of man defines his life. Under a system predesigned for the failure of the common man, this is a dilemma existential authors have been tackling for ages, especially since the advent of capitalism.
“Although my drawings depict an ancient war, I find scenes from the bloodlust and violence of the modern world crawling into the frame. Amidst the swords and the shields, one catches glimpses of the horrors in Palestine deployed by weapons of mass destruction. It is unavoidable that the viewer draws these parallels to the ongoing genocide; art inevitably reflects the reality,” he added.
Madhusudhanan pointed out how the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) governing the country often invokes texts like the Bhagavad Gita to legitimize the Sangh’s agenda, including the caste hierarchy enshrined in the four-varna system. He outlined the ironic significance of using these very religious texts to present counter narratives. Tales like that of Iravan in Mahabharata distort the dominant brahminical reading and introduce moments of queerness and anxiety within the epic. Familial conditioning and policing by the society makes it practically impossible to critically read these texts and, Madhusudhanan said, he intended to challenge these ‘certainties’ while leaving room for doubt and reflection.
However, when asked about the risks of undertaking such a project under a right-wing Hindutva government, he said he did not expect art to change the world. “An artist puts forward a certain feeling/sensibility through his art. If it resonates with the viewer's sensibilities, it lingers and if not, it is simply forgotten.”
Madhusudhanan’s series remains heavily inspired by the Medieval Renaissance and pre-Renaissance paintings, although not in style. He pulled out his phone and showed his wallpaper, Caravaggio’s famous ‘Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy.’ The painting depicts Mary Magdalene in exile in a cave in France. It was believed that she was transported by the angels to god seven times a day and earlier artists depicted this scene with colourful clouds and celestial choirs accompanying her.
However, in Caravaggio’s painting, Mary Magdalene seems to be in a liminal space between consciousness and delirium with her head rolling back, eyes shut and mouth partially open. Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro technique in playing with lights and shadows is prominent and crucial in setting the scene — unlike those before him, Caravaggio surrounds Mary Magdalene in darkness with the only source of light falling on her from above. The celestial music and the angels pulling her into ecstasy are all imagined to be embedded within this darkness.
Madhusudhanan calls Caravaggio’s interpretation of this scene ‘revolutionary.’ He believes that every artist should break the boundaries set by religion/state, especially in depicting the ‘divine’ to truly explore creative realms.
This is exactly what Madhusudhanan attempts to accomplish through his Book of War series. His drawings of the ‘heroes’ of Mahabharata, typically portrayed in fancy ornate fashions, are rudimentary and non-stylised. By stripping them of embellishment, he subverts the traditional image of the Hindu masculine identity, allowing one to explore abstractions within the stringent boundaries set by the epic.
Madhusudhanan’s work, while evidently political, is also deeply personal. Growing up on the shores of a beach in Alappuzha, his first tryst with drawing was by scribbling on the white sands. The sweeping lights from the lighthouse next to his home manifested into the dance of lights and shadows in his drawings. He told me how his college life in Kuttanad, where a lot of village names end in ‘kari’ or charcoal (this etymology may be credited to the charcoal sedimented lands), subconsciously inspired him to use charcoal as one of his primary mediums.
His previous series such as ‘Marx Archive: Logic of Disappearance’, ‘Gandhi and Objects,’ and ‘Penal Colony’ portrayed a delightful intermingling of his personal and the political.
His Marx Archive was especially intriguing to me.
Madhusudhanan was previously part of the Indian Radical Painters' and Sculptors' Association, a group of leftist artists in Baroda, which later disbanded following the tragic death of their leader KP Krishnakumar. Was this series a result of Madhusudhanan’s disillusionment with the movement? Was the Gandhi series that came subsequently, a response to the shattered Marxist dream that he once held close to his heart?
The recurring motifs in his art — the skeletons, weapons, and dismantled statues of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao — naturally prompt such questions, but Madhusudhanan’s answers were not so black and white. Staying true to the Marxist tradition, his series is a call for introspection and critique within the movement. While recalling examples of censorship and authoritarianism — such as the shelving of Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible II and Russian revolutionary Trotsky’s exile in artist Frida Kahlo's house — Madhusudhanan’s contentions originate from a place of responsibility and hope that one owes to the cause.
In his gallery space, I spotted a painting of a fallen Lenin statue alongside a Coca Cola bottle with a caption reading ‘Drink for Victory’ (Coca Cola here symbolises American hegemony/capitalism). The ‘pig’ and the ‘rhino’ (popular symbols of greed and wealth) being a regular subject of his drawings and sculptures is no coincidence either — his commentary on fascism and perils of capitalism remains stronger than ever.
The series on Gandhi came after Madhusudhanan’s time in Ahmedabad around the Sabarmati Ashram. His muse shifting from Marx to Gandhi as in the Indian political landscape was intriguing, as they are two figures whose followers almost never see eye to eye. However, in Madhusudhanan’s case, this progression seemed organic as he views Gandhi (and his objects) as a symbol of grounding and peace. He makes an interesting comparison between Yasujiro Ozu, a prolific Japanese filmmaker, who was known for his distinctive camera style of using low angle shots, and Gandhi’s profound connection to the ground through his charkha, short chairs, bed, and lamps.
The effortless flow between visual mediums that Madhusudhanan handles with utmost finesse is a testament to his unpresuming genius. For him, these mediums constantly interact with one another, and he deems their co-existence necessary for holistic creative expression. Interestingly, Madhusudhanan added that he sketches almost every frame of his films, including for his award-winning film Bioscope.
Madhusudhanan’s paintings, sculptures, and films are an ode to his love for art and cinema, evident in his fond musings of Andrei Tarkovsky, Francisco Goya, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, and the innumerable artists he pays homage to through his work. One can only leave his home/studio longing for more, the experience engulfing you in a world of art, politics, and literature, and challenging your pre-conceived notions about the same.