“The theme of human aspirations, people wanting to reach forwards and upwards, had always engaged me. We want to be elevated, to take at least one step ahead…” 

- KS Radhakrishnan                

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In the early 2000s, Radhakrishnan’s sympathy for the human desire to improve their lives came together with his creative wish to work on an architectonic structure. He decided to use the steady elevation of a ramp to represent this wish to progress ahead and reach higher.

 

He created large Musui and Maiya figures as Sri Ramkrishna and the mother Sarada. Their singular images, the multiplicity of the ‘little people’, and the idea of the ramp combined as the Ramp series. In 2004, two ramps were made with the towering Sri Ramkrishna and Ma Sarada on each, surrounded by smaller Musuis and Maiyas who were moving upwards emotively. After a trip to Egypt, he also made a ramp with Selkit, the Egyptian guardian goddess. She stands on the ramp as if protecting humanity. These were huge, philosophical installations.

 

Given his tendency to bring together the different kinds of works he does, Musui and Maiya’s ‘Freehold’ figures too transitioned to a ramp. Pillars holding the cartwheeling Musuis and Maiyas on them were placed on a ramp in which smaller Musuis and Maiyas explored their own upward dynamic. The wall at the end of the ramp was not an end but the possibility of a new beginning. Exhibited in 2008, ‘Liminal Figures Liminal Space’ extended more than 40 feet and was his biggest ramp.