Artist Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran on ‘the framework of success for a good Asian’-By Benjamin Law
“People with creative lifestyles can actually have stable incomes, flourish and be valued in society.”
Source:Theage
Each week, Benjamin Law asks public figures to discuss the subjects we’re told to keep private by getting them to roll a die. The numbers they land on are the topics they’re given. This week, he talks to Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran. The Sri Lankan-born Australian artist, 33, is best known for his brightly-coloured ceramic figures, which have been shown in public galleries and last month at Vivid Sydney. His monograph, Ramesh, is out now.
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SEX
Was your family more concerned about you being queer or being an artist – or neither? It was almost like it was lumped into one package. Part of the artist package was this idea of an unconventional lifestyle. It’s quite confusing, for recent migrants especially, to understand how people with creative lifestyles can actually have stable incomes, flourish and be valued in society.
And was that package confronting for anyone? It was totally confronting. Go to university, have some kind of STEM education, don’t leave home until you can get a mortgage, then get married and have kids: that’s the framework of success for a good Asian person. It’s interesting. I also have an ongoing position at the University of NSW as a lecturer. When I was appointed there in 2017, it was like, “Okay, he’s been recognised by a sandstone university.”
Are you partnered or single at the moment? Single.
And ready to mingle? Yeah! Pretty much.
What are three criteria you’re looking for in a partner? Ambitious. Interested in food – I can’t do people who don’t like food; what would I even do with them? [laughs] And chilled – because I’m not!
True or false: artists are good lovers. True [laughs]. Lots of artists lack boundaries. Which sometimes translates well in the bedroom.
POLITICS
“All art is political.” Discuss. So much art conforms to the status quo. And not every cultural object that comes out into the world reflects political and social environments. There is so much art that is completely orthodox. Just because it might be some weird performance doesn’t make it challenging or progressive.
So in there I hear the implication that not all art is political … but good art should be? When I talk about these kinds of value terms – like “good” and “bad” – it’s just like a recipe to get cancelled [laughs]. Personally, I’m interested in art that’s authentic. Authentic expressions come from having interesting life experiences. And to make interesting art you have to be an interesting person. I’m not saying you need to be some radical zealot. All I’m saying is that you need to have some nuanced, interesting perspective on the world, and ideas, to be able to make interesting, engaging artwork. And most people don’t.
Does the idea of being cancelled make you anxious? I’m quite confident that my opinions aren’t harmful. But I often have very critical opinions and it’s important to be careful with how they’re expressed, because there’s a difference sometimes between what people say and what they mean. As an artist, you’re making an artwork, not writing an essay. [Artworks] can be interpreted in ways that might become mobilised in a certain cultural or political or social climate, in a way that you didn’t intend. So when I talk about being cancelled, I kind of say it in jest. You know what it’s like: some days you might get an Instagram comment that’s a death threat and you don’t care. And on other days, they say, “Why does this thing look like a five-year-old did it?” and you want to cry!
How optimistic are you about how the arts will fare under this new federal government? Of course I’m more confident with this government, but I don’t want to count my chickens. What I’ve tried to think laterally about – or be open about – are things like private sponsorship and collaborations, because there’s almost a sense that [art] is less ideological in that space.
At the same time, corporate and philanthropic private donations can be fraught, right? If I’m going to accept government support, or work with a national or state institution, to fund my commission … I’m pretty sure the federal government is funding detention centres. So I don’t understand how to be ethical when accepting support and money when I’m making an artwork – and I’m happy to acknowledge that. But also it’s about the artwork that you can make with that support. I feel that there’s power in visibility and presence.
DEATH
How do you feel about the idea of your artwork outliving you? A comfort or a kind of existential horror? Oh my god, it’s both. When I go into museums, a lot of trendy young people of colour are not into white male modernists – and rightly so. Matisse? Nup! Not interested. This is the sentiment. What’s hard to deal with is understanding that in a couple of hundred years, I’ll have these big installations in museums and young people will be like, “Nup!”
So it’s not the idea of the work outliving you; it’s the notion the work outlives you … and becomes passé. Yeah, and it will! That’s just the way it works. It’ll become a historical record of a time – a record of sculptural practice from 2022.
When art becomes artefact. Yeah! And I don’t think it’ll be that interesting.
How would you like to die? Painlessly.
How would you not like to die? Slowly.
Plan your funeral for me. I don’t want anything religious. I want to be cremated. There has to be lots of food. I don’t want people to have to wear really nice clothes; they should just come as they are. And I don’t want long speeches! Two or three minutes each.
