Continuiverse : A Contemporary Indian Sculpture Exhibition By C Krishnaswamy At Ashvita’s Gallery — Inspired By The Guardian God Ayyanar Tradition Of Southern India, Reimagining Guardian Figures, Land, Memory & Community Through Folk Art And Modern Sculpture
– exploring ayyanar guardian traditions reborn in contemporary sculpture
| CasualWalker’s Rating for Continuiverse – C Krishnaswamy’s contemporary sculpture exhibition at Ashvita’s : | |
9.9 – Earthy, Timeless, Striking |
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Continuiverse, C Krishnaswamy’s striking contemporary sculpture exhibition at Ashvita’s Gallery, curated by Rithik Pramod and Ashvin E Rajagopalan and organized by Ashvita’s gallery, pulls viewers into a quiet meditation on land, memory and community through a series of powerful sculptures.
Drawing its inspiration from the Lord Ayyanar tradition of southern India, an age old practice in which clay was shaped into monumental guardian figures and placed at village boundaries to protect the community, the show breathes new life into an ancient act of devotion. Krishnaswamy takes these time honoured guardians and reimagines them entirely, translating a centuries old visual language into a bold contemporary vocabulary that speaks to audiences far beyond the villages of Tamil Nadu.
About Ashvita’s Gallery
Ashvita’s is a well regarded fine art gallery based in Chennai, formerly known as Madras, with its primary focus on the Madras School of art, examining nearly three centuries of artistic development from the region. Established in 2002, the gallery has hosted more than one hundred and ten carefully researched exhibitions spanning pre independence, modern, contemporary and regional Indian art, drawing from its own collection as well as private collectors, partner galleries and institutions, each accompanied by talks, tours and discussions.
Over the last three years, Ashvita’s has collaborated with institutions across the country to bring the Madras School to wider audiences, representing the estates of several important artists while nurturing a select group of young and emerging contemporary voices from Chennai.
About The Artist C Krishnaswamy
Born in Salem, C Krishnaswamy is a performance artist whose practice weaves traditional ritual and movement with contemporary expression, drawing from the rituals, festivals and everyday rhythms of Tamil Nadu and transforming these living traditions, which he sees not as historical relics but as evolving expressions of creativity, into contemporary artistic dialogue through live performance and sculpture.
At the heart of his philosophy lies a belief in shared experience and individual interpretation, as he encourages each viewer to encounter his work personally, likening every individual to a unique antenna capable of receiving and responding to creative energy in their own way, a openness that reflects his deep respect for cultural heritage even as he recontextualises it within a modern performative framework.
About The Continuiverse Show
Continuiverse explores ecological memory, primordial consciousness and the continuity of existence across time. Krishnaswamy draws on the Ayyanar tradition, not as religious observance, but as a primal human expression of guardianship rooted in the bond between land, community and unseen forces. Through this lens, his sculptures examine how ancient presences continue to inhabit contemporary life, regardless of where that life unfolds.
The works emerge from a landscape tradition in which protection, memory and ecology were inseparable. In the Ayyanar shrines of Tamil Nadu, village boundaries became sacred sites of ritual, remembrance and collective responsibility. Clay was shaped into monumental horse and guardian figures and placed at the edges of settlements to watch over their people. Earth itself became protector, the guardian never separate from the terrain it inhabited, sharing both its material and symbolic existence.
Many of these age old relationships are now undergoing profound transformation, a condition shared by communities across the world as agricultural and sacred landscapes give way to urban expansion. Rivers are reduced to infrastructure, fields turn into corridors of development, and the ties that once bound people to place grow fragmented even as the physical landscape often remains.
It is from this urgency that Krishnaswamy’s work draws its energy. He reimagines the monumental guardian figures as embodiments of resilience, ecological intelligence and continuity, rather than simply replicating them as religious icons. The sculptures pose a quiet but powerful question, whether something fundamental persists once form dissolves, and whether inherited understandings of coexistence can endure as villages and rituals are irrevocably altered.
To bring these ideas into a global, present day visual language, Krishnaswamy employs a contemporary material vocabulary, cement, brick, metal, stone, fiberglass and electric light. Through this material choice, the exhibition explores the presence of the guardian within landscapes shaped by urbanisation, migration and memory.
At the core of the work lies a belief that all forms are temporary manifestations of a deeper continuity. Human beings, landscapes, objects and living organisms emerge, transform and vanish, yet the relationships that bind them endure. Krishnaswamy suggests that continuity does not reside in fixed objects but in the enduring relationships between land, memory, consciousness and material life, inviting viewers to reconsider what remains after transformation.
My visit to Ashvita’s, more out of curiosity than expectation, and left with my mind still wandering through fields of clay horses and half remembered village shrines. Walking through Continuiverse, I found myself pausing longer than I expected before each sculpture. There is something quietly powerful about seeing the Ayyanar guardian tradition, so familiar from childhood visits to village temples, reborn in cement, metal and light. It reminded me that Chennai’s art scene is not just about preserving the past but about letting it speak in new tongues. Ashvita’s, tucked away on Radha Krishnan Salai, remains one of those rare spaces in the city where tradition and contemporary thought meet without friction, and Continuiverse is a fine reminder of why that meeting matters.
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