Artist Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran Takes Us Inside His Studio

Ramesh Mario Nithiyendram photographed by Photography by Mark Pokorny Esquire Studio Sessions — Ramesh Mario Nithiyendram in his studio with ‘Self Portrait with Masks’, 2024. Photography: Mark Pokorny

“I ALWAYS LOVE showing people my studio, it’s like showing people the guts of my imagination,” says artist Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran. “It feels a bit revealing . . . but enjoy.”

Indeed, if you wanted to delve into the inner workings of Nithiyendran’s mind, this would be the place to do it. Housed inside an industrial complex behind a CrossFit gym and a sail manufacturer, Nithiyendran’s studio is bursting with colour, miscellaneous found objects and piles of diaries, which the artist uses to “work out ideas”. “I’m quite attached to these, by the way,” he tells us as he flips through their pages, revealing sketched creature after sketched creature. “I don’t know why, I’m not generally very sentimental about the work . . . but I feel like my whole mind is in here, and that’s where all the artworks develop.”

If you’re not familiar with Nithiyendran’s practice, allow us to give you a crash course (though, if you want the less abridged version, we highly recommend reading his monograph). Born in Sri Lanka, the artist has amassed a global following for his new-age idols; bronze, ceramic and clay sculptures that combine pop culture symbolism with references to his ancestry, while exploring gender and sex politics, religious iconographies and global histories. Troye Sivan owns one of Nithiyendran’s sculptures, while his monumental work, ‘Avatar Towers’, occupies the Art Gallery of New South Wales’s entry vestibule. TLDR: he’s very clever, very successful and very fashionable.

But his new show revolves around what might be his “magnum opus”. Standing at over two metres tall (and that’s without the colourful plinth), ‘Self Portrait with Masks’ might be the most personal work Nithiyendran has ever made — it’s the first time the artist has used his own likeness — aka his own face — in one of his works. The show also sees Nithiyendran expand in a thematic sense, by exploring the loaded motif of the mask and what it means today.

Ahead of the solo show, which is now open at Sullivan+Strumpf in Sydney, we paid the artist a visit to learn more about his process, the evolution of his aesthetic and why he loves raiding costume shops. Watch his full episode of Esquire Studio Sessions below.