Unlike his contemporaries from Santiniketan, who ruminate over the political unrest and the consequences of media blitzkrieg in the society, Hussain gives us flatly depicted scenes of domestic bliss of a nuclear family which is his iconographic focus. But there is a sexual weirdness in his latest series, After the Theatre of Absurdity, all acrylic on canvas, on display at Vadehra Art Gallery in Okhla these days.

The usually reticent artist’s images on canvas which are culled from his acquaintances’ family albums are quirky and mischievous, hinting at society’s sexual double standards.

At first glance, you might be overawed by the big brightly colored grinning members from a family. Incandescent display of love, a violently pink dog and a man with a lascivious grin twiddling with a woman’s underpants appear as though they are in a psychedelic state. “You might be able to spot me as well in one of them,” quipped Hussain. Besides, the illusion of happiness, animals float in and out of the canvas. “They appear as if they have been taken from a Walt Disney cartoon,” says art critic Uma Prakash.

Making a departure from vibrant colours is After the Theatre of Absurdity Part-I which has a mélange of men tugging at each other in a haze of black doom. In the background, caricaturist apes are locked in a waltz. “Humans did evolve from apes and it is in the most subversive of acts that animalistic passions resurface,” explains Hussain. Of all the 12 canvases, Happy Birthday seems the most normal with frolicking adults.