Karn Sureshkumar
Painting
The central idea for my work is my upbringing in a collective society and how it clashes with the individualistic morals and values that Western media portrays through advertising. These ads enforce individualistic ideals, and provides only one voice to people. They manipulate us by speaking for us on how we should live and what we should try to be. This act of deciding for the people, by convincing them, this is what they want is a form of hegemony. This singular and dominant perspective in ads is problematic.
Ad Series
This is a series of works that uses ads form Western and Indian media to demonstrate the clash between the ideologies that they project. Since I grew up in South India and now live in Canada, this clash in ideals that is displayed by these ads between the Western Individualistic ideology, and the Indian Collective ideology is very important to me and my work.
