Vivan Sundaram was born in Shimla in 1943. He studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University of Baroda, Vadodara, and the Slade School of Fine Art, London, in the 1960s. He returned to India in 1970 and continued painting. Since 1990 he has turned to making artworks as sculpture, installation, photography and video. These works have been widely exhibited nationally and internationally. He has also organized artists’ workshops, curated exhibitions and done public art projects. A member of the Sher-Gil family, Vivan Sundaram has been engaged with the Sher-Gil project for over thirty years – as artist, curator, editor and archivist. The Sher-Gil Family, a painting made in 1983–1984, and The Sher-Gil Archive, an installation made in 1995, are precursors to his 'Re-take of Amrita’, a series of digital photomontages made in 2001.
