Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran: Idols of Mud and Water
Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran’s most significant international commission to date, Idols of Mud and Water is showing at Scotland’s leading and largest international contemporary art space, Tramway in Glasgow. His first institutional solo exhibition in the UK and Europe, the exhibition transforms Tramway’s T2 gallery space into a monumental immersive mythological ruin featuring hundreds of Nithiyendran’s signature colourful, hybrid, Hindu godlike figures. The exhibition brings to life an expansive and new speculative narrative around elemental forces – combining queer politics, anthropomorphism, monumentality and popular culture – in which smoke, mud, water and light are characters. Evoking the symbolism of the elements, including floods and other natural disasters, Nithiyendran engages with global debates on the impacts of climate change while his hybrid avatars speak to growing fluidity across genders, races, belief systems and even species. Idols of Mud and Water continues until April 21, 2024.
