Ravinder Reddy is working on his biggest sculpture yet: a 24-foot head that is being assembled in a shed built for the purpose on his two-acre property in Visakhapatnam. A burly man clambers up the ladder propped against a cheek to work on one of the joints holding the six pieces together. A Telugu film song plays on a tinny speaker, barely audible above the tinkering in the yard in front of the studio. A cleaning cloth suspended from the left nostril flutters ludicrously. The cranium and the neck, yet to be fixed, soak in the sun like a macabre forensic puzzle. Eventually, a bun will be attached to the back of the head and a bag placed atop it, Reddy says, “to symbolise migration, displacement, mobility”. Now that the piece, in the works for many summers, may finally find a home at the Bengaluru airport, Reddy wants to use it to interrogate the praxis of urban life and to call attention to the sociocultural identity of the outsiders who build our cities, the people we technically see every day but don’t quite register. “We are all visitors journeying somewhere. If an immense sculpture could make city-hoppers pause for a moment to think about the village woman with dreams and a packed lunch atop her head, then my job is done,” he says.
Ravinder Reddy: The Man with the Heads
By V Sobha | Open Magazine
14 April 2020
