Hunger and Sacrifice: The Lines and Dots of Selva Senthil Kumar- M.D.Muthukumaraswamy
Introduction: The Aesthetics of Abnegation
This brochure accompanies the exhibition, Hunger and Sacrifice: The Lines and Dots of Selva Senthil Kumar, a major new body of works from the artist featuring nearly 200 paintings and drawings. Born in 1985, Selva Senthil Kumar earned his BFA degree from DMS LKMS college, Mysore in 2012. His figurative paintings have brought him early recognition for their haunting imageries. In his visceral and challenging works, the canvas becomes an arena for primal conflicts. His art, characterised by a raw, expressionistic energy, confronts the viewer with uncomfortable truths about power, survival, and suffering. The thirteen paintings explored here are a representative selection from this significant collection. Through a dynamic interplay of frantic lines, symbolic dots, and an earthy, elemental palette, Selva Senthil Kumar constructs a world where the boundaries between predator and prey, victor and victim, are hauntingly blurred. Each piece serves as a chapter in a larger narrative of struggle that is at once deeply personal and strikingly universal.
To navigate this difficult terrain, Selva Senthil Kumar has developed a highly personal and potent graphic lexicon, reducing his formal means to their most essential components: the line and the dot. In his hands, these are not mere technical devices but the fundamental constituents of a non-verbal script, a system of mark-making that gives form to the silent, interior experiences of his subjects. The line, often agitated and tremulous, traces the contours of anxiety, the nervous energy of a body under duress. The dot, deployed in dense, pulsating fields, suggests both the granular texture of the earth and the dissolution of form into a cosmic dust, a particle-state of being. This unique grammar, drawn from a deep and conscious engagement with the history of Indian art, becomes the language through which the silent scream of hunger and the solemn gravity of sacrifice are rendered visible and palpable.
II. The Figural Body: Between the Grotesque and the Sacred
At the heart of Selva Senthil Kumar's artistic universe is the human figure, rendered not with anatomical precision but with a raw, psychological intensity that pushes it toward the realm of the monstrous. These are not bodies of flesh and blood in the conventional sense; they are spectral, skeletal, and distorted, their forms pared down to an essential expression of suffering and endurance. Selva Senthil Kumar’s figures function as what cultural theorists have termed "monstrous bodies"—hybrid entities that are simultaneously abject and sacred, embodying the core thematic tension of the exhibition.1 They exist in a liminal state, caught between the degradation of the flesh and the possibility of spiritual release, forcing the viewer to confront the uncomfortable proximity of the grotesque and the holy.
The confrontational and raw figuration in Selva Senthil Kumar’s work finds a powerful precedent in the legacy of Francis Newton Souza, the rebellious co-founder of the Progressive Artists' Group. Souza’s paintings of grotesque heads and mutilated nudes were a deliberate assertion of an uninhibited, primal expression. Selva Senthil Kumar’s work can be read as a spiritual successor to this tradition of the grotesque, yet with a significant thematic shift. Where Souza’s rebellion was often directed outward, against societal and religious hypocrisy, Selva Senthil Kumar’s focus is more internal. He repurposes the aesthetic of the grotesque to explore the existential condition of hunger, a state of being that is less about active rebellion and more about a profound, gnawing lack.
This transformation of specific trauma into a universal symbol finds another crucial parallel in the work of Tyeb Mehta. Mehta’s iconic "falling figure" motif was born from the indelible memory of witnessing violence during the Partition riots of 1947, becoming a modernist symbol for universal suffering in post-Partition India. Selva Senthil Kumar, in a similar vein, seems to utilise his recurring figural types—the emaciated body, the hollowed-out face—to encapsulate a universal experience. His work suggests that the state of hunger, like Mehta’s falling figure, is not merely a social condition but an existential one, a state of precarity and vulnerability that defines the human experience itself.
III. A Grammar of Form: The Expressive Power of Line and Dot
The profound thematic weight of Selva Senthil Kumar’s work is carried by a formal language of remarkable discipline and expressive power. His chosen lexicon of the line and the dot is not a decorative flourish but a visceral, non-linguistic script that communicates his themes of hunger and sacrifice with a directness that bypasses intellectual analysis and strikes at a deeper, more intuitive level of understanding.
The agitated line in Selva Senthil Kumar’s paintings is an active, energetic force, conveying the inner state of his figures. In this, he enters into a compelling dialogue with the work of Jogen Chowdhury, one of the great masters of the modern Indian line, renowned for his use of cross-hatching with ink and pastel to convey "psychological unease and existential anxieties”. Selva Senthil Kumar’s line, while sharing this expressive purpose, often feels more spontaneous, a direct inscription of a fleeting state of being. It is the line of anxiety, the tremor of a body weakened by hunger, the tautness of a form held in a state of sacrificial tension.
Complementing this linear energy is his use of the dot, which connects his practice to the indigenous art of the Gond tribe and the revolutionary work of Jangarh Singh Shyam. The signature element of the Jangarh Kalam style is its intricate patterning of dots and dashes, rooted in the shamanic belief that the body’s particles disperse and merge with spirits. For Selva Senthil Kumar, the dot is a primal particle, a symbol of both matter and spirit. When clustered, the dots suggest a body constituted from the earth; when they disperse, they evoke a sense of dissolution, of the body breaking down and merging with a larger cosmic field. This makes the dot a perfect visual metaphor for sacrifice—a process of self-annihilation where the individual form is relinquished to become part of a greater whole.
In his synthesis, Selva Senthil Kumar creates a unique dialectic. He draws on the tradition of Jogen Chowdhury, whose cross-hatched lines in ink and pastel create texture and convey psychological tension. Simultaneously, he channels the spirit of Jangarh Singh Shyam, whose radiating dots in gouache and acrylic are rooted in a Gond shamanic worldview, symbolising the dissolution of the body into spiritual particles. For Selva Senthil Kumar, the line expresses the visceral, existential anxiety of "Hunger," while the dot invokes the primal, spiritual dissolution of "Sacrifice," creating a tension between individual suffering and cosmic connection.
IV. The Paintings: A Thematic Journey
The narrative of the exhibition unfolds across a series of thematic movements, tracing a path from raw, external conflict to a deep, internalised spiritual struggle. The thirteen paintings examined here serve as key waypoints on this journey.
From Predation to Puppetry: The Externalisation of Power
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| Painting 1: The Weight of Predation |
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| Painting 2: The Marionettes of Suffering |
This raw, physical subjugation transitions into a more insidious realm of psychological control in Painting 2: The Marionettes of Suffering. Here, the sacrifice is the loss of agency itself. A large, horned beast looms as thin, black strings descend to manipulate two central figures—a woman and a skeletal man—turning them into marionettes in a grotesque dance. Their featureless faces signify a complete loss of identity. Below them, a blindfolded figure screams silently, a sacrifice of sight and truth. The palette shifts to a deeper, muddier brown, immersing the scene in an atmosphere of decay and artificiality. The work brilliantly expands the collection's central thesis: hunger is not just a physical appetite but also a hunger for control.
Ritual, Acquiescence, and the Siege of the Self
The narrative then turns inward, exploring how external power structures are internalised through ritual and psychological pressure. Painting 3: The Altar of Acquiescence plunges the viewer into a nocturnal, ritualistic space. The scene is not one of overt struggle, but of a solemn, ceremonial offering. A luminous, goat-like creature stands upon a sickly green altar, its posture serene and ambiguous. It is not a beast being hunted; it is a sacrifice being presented, witnessed by a stoic, bird-headed priest and a kneeling, skeletal supplicant. The use of a profound black void as the background creates an atmosphere of claustrophobic intimacy, suggesting that the most profound sacrifices are not those exacted by force, but those willingly given, born from an ideology that sanctifies death.
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| Painting 3: The Altar of Acquiescence |
This internalisation becomes a chaotic battle in Painting 4: The Cacophony of Consumption, a swirling vortex of conflict. A monstrous, two-headed avian beast, its torso an open cage of trophies, attacks a screaming, blue donkey-like figure. The scene is framed by decaying pillars, suggesting a recurring battle within a brutal, historical arena. The complex, layered technique, combining meticulous cross-hatching with raw, gouged textures, mirrors the thematic density.
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| Painting 4: The Cacophony of Consumption |
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| Painting 5; The burden of consciousness |
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| Painting 6: The Oracle of Muted Screams |
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| Painting 7 The Cage of Identities |
The focus shifts again in Painting 7: The Cage of Identities, where the theme becomes one of imprisonment and surveillance. A luminous yellow feline, its expression one of wary intelligence, sits trapped behind the bars of a cage. It is surrounded by a gallery of spectral onlookers and disembodied masks. The conflict is now a psychological siege, the sacrifice being the loss of freedom and authenticity in a world that demands performance. The feline’s direct gaze challenges the viewer, implicating them in this act of watching.
The Fractured Self and the Weight of Being
The subsequent paintings delve deeper into the fragmentation of the self under the immense pressure of existence. Painting 8: The Doppelgänger's Dance strips the world of colour, presenting a stark, monochromatic confrontation between a man in a tiger mask and his demonic, skeletal alter ego. They stand on platforms made of enormous, disembodied jaws, a potent symbol that their very existence is built upon a history of consumption. The work is a graphic exploration of the idea that to survive, one must embrace the monster within.
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| Painting 8: The Doppelgänger's Dance |
This psychological weight is given physical form in Painting 5: The Burden of Consciousness. A hunched, simian figure sits in weary anguish, a host to the world's demons. A horned beast perches on his back like an oppressive memory, while other creatures from Selva Senthil Kumar’s mythology converge upon him. Most compellingly, an owl-like figure to the right is rendered as a drawing filled with cryptic script, a symbol of logic and language trapped and unable to contain the primal chaos.
The theme of seeing and being seen is distilled into a disorienting, primal image in Painting 9: The Inverted Gaze. The world is turned upside down as an inverted, star-dappled creature descends, its head merging into a single, hypnotic eye that holds a vibrant green, skeletal creature captive. The sacrifice here is of logic and natural order, suggesting the ultimate struggle is one of vision and will—the power to hold another in your gaze and consume their very essence.
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| Painting 9: The Inverted Gaze |
Apparitions in the Void: The Final Sacrifice
The final sequence of paintings takes place in an absolute black void, a space of memory, spirit, and dissolution. Painting 10: Apparition in the Void presents a fragmented, composite figure materialising from the darkness. It is a being of parts: a skeletal torso, a snarling canine head, a disembodied mask held aloft. It is a walking reliquary of past conflicts, a body sacrificing its own coherence to the consuming emptiness.
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| Painting 10: Apparition in the Void |
This is followed by Painting 11: The Weight of Tradition, where a weary, primal figure collapses under the burden of its history. On its back rests a complex scaffold carrying the noble head of a sacrificial bull. The painting is a quiet, devastating critique of how traditions, however noble, can become an unbearable burden, forcing the living to carry the ghosts of the dead.
The journey finds a moment of precarious balance in Painting 12: The Divine Assemblage. Here, a mythological totem pole is constructed from the void. A reclining earth-god gives rise to a wise elephant, which in turn offers a bowl containing a fragile bird to a doll-like human idol. It is a creation myth where sacrifice is a nurturing, symbiotic offering between different states of being, though still watched over by the threat of a snarling predator.
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| Painting 11: The Weight of Tradition |
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| Painting 12: The Divine Assemblage. |
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| Painting 13: The Shaman's Ride |
V. Conclusion: A Narrative of Contemporary India
Through a disciplined and potent visual language of lines and dots, Selva Senthil Kumar has forged a body of works that is at once deeply personal and profoundly resonant with broader cultural histories. His work finds kinship with the narrative figuration movement that gained prominence in India in the 1970s, particularly with artists like Bhupen Khakhar, who turned their gaze to the lives of ordinary people, telling stories of class, identity, and desire with empathy and wit. Like Khakhar, Selva Senthil Kumar is a storyteller of the margins. However, his mode of narration is not illustrative or anecdotal; it is elemental and corporeal. He does not depict scenes from a life; he uses the body itself as the primary text and his visceral marks as the script. The stories he tells are etched directly onto the skin and bone of his figures, narratives of lack and endurance, of physical decay and spiritual resilience.
Ultimately, the art of Selva Senthil Kumar offers an unflinching yet deeply empathetic commentary on the material and spiritual paradoxes of contemporary India and, by extension, the modern world. His paintings do not offer easy answers or political solutions. Instead, they create stark, unforgettable icons that embody the most profound questions of existence. The figures that populate his canvases are suspended in a state of perpetual tension—between the body and the spirit, the individual and the cosmos, the abject and the sacred. They are haunting because they reflect a universal truth: that in the experience of profound lack, in the very act of being stripped down to one's essential self, there exists the potential for a strange and terrible grace. Through his singular vision, Selva Senthil Kumar challenges us to look at the uncomfortable realities of hunger not as a sign of failure, but as a fundamental human state from which a unique and powerful form of sacrifice—and art—can be born.
VI. Works Cited
Bhagat, Ashrafi S. "Madras Art Movement: A Regional Study." Thesis, Stella Maris College, Chennai. dspace.stellamariscollege.edu.in:8080/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/1296/Ashrafi%20S.%20Bhagat.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y. Accessed 15 Oct. 2023.
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. "Monster Culture (Seven Theses)." Monster Theory: Reading Culture, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, University of Minnesota Press, 1996, pp. 3-25.
Flam, Jack, and Miriam Deutch, editors. Primitivism and Twentieth-Century Art: A Documentary History. University of California Press, 2003.
Hoskote, Ranjit. Tyeb Mehta: Ideas Images Exchanges. Vadehra Art Gallery, 2005.
Perdriolle, Herve. Indian Art: Contemporary, One Word, Several Worlds. 5 Continents Editions, 2011.
Rubin, William, editor. "Primitivism" in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern. The Museum of Modern Art, 1984.
Shekhar, Amruth. "The Calligraphic Essence in the Words and Symbols Series of Paintings by KCS Paniker." International Journal of Factual and Molecular Research, vol. 7, no. 2, Mar.-Apr. 2025, pp. 41471-41476.
Souza, F.N. Words & Lines. Introduction by Jag Mohan, Published by Francis Newton Souza, 1959.
Tillotson, Giles. Primitivism and Modern Indian Art. DAG, 2019.
Vajpeyi, Udayan. "From Music to Painting." Native Art of India, edited by Sathyapal, Kerala Lalithakala Akademi, 2011, p. 33.
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