Last week, two climate activists splashed soup on a glass-encased Mona Lisa at the Louvre, wanting to make a statement about the irrelevance of fine art at a time when the world needs a more “healthy and sustainable food system”. Closer home, some artists are using more innovative ways to raise environmental consciousness without resorting to gimmicks.From using sustainable materials to building networks with scientists and policymakers, their artworks serve to highlight the enormity of the climate crisis.
The 15th edition of the India Art Fair (IAF) is doing its bit to improve its ecological footprint, aside from making environmentalism and sustainability key themes for several of its exhibits. The IAF façade is designed by the artist duo Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra with a vision of colourful pixels. To ensure a life for the facade after the fair, the artists will collaborate with the Dalit-run Chamar Studio who will repurpose it into collectible bags.
Going green: In Sadhana Prasad’s work, one can zoom in on waste and pollution with an iPad Pro
The multidisciplinary duo has also launched Sustaina India — a climate action collective which cross-pollinates art, science and policy through annual fellowships, exhibitions and public programmes, in collaboration with think tank Council on Energy, Environment and Water. The first edition of their exhibition, which opened on Feb 2 at Bikaner House, features three emerging artists working on eco-consciousness — from reimagining the potential of sea waste that washes up on Saaral Beach in Alibag to recreating ‘The Parliament of Forests’ with protagonists like herbaceous plants, mosses, algae, fungi, soil and lichen. “The policymakers work top to down whereas artistic practices are more decentralised. We are learning from each other,” says Tagra, adding that they are using a new kind of wood made of straw culture for exhibition design and avoiding the use of diesel-belching cars and bubble-wrap to pack artworks.
The Fair also features Skarma Sonam Tashi, a contemporary artist from Ladakh, who has created an immersive mountain landscape using 200 cardboard boxes, clay, papier-mâché, with maida acting as glue. In the evening, the mountain will come alive with light and sound elements. “It has been an unusually arid winter in Ladakh, with no snowfall in December and January. This is all because of climate change. The villages depend on snowfall for electricity and drinking water. Our glaciers are melting. This work is also political in the sense that it is asking for Ladakh to be brought under the sixth schedule,” says the 27-year-old who has also received the Hyundai Motor India Foundation’s Art for Hope grant.
Skarma Sonam Tashi highlights melting glaciers.
Ongoing eco-exhibits which consider sustainability as their muse are also conscious of the inexorable march of technology. Several artworks at IAF have employed advanced gadgets to create sensory experiences. In Dhruv Jani’s conceptual video game called ‘It Takes A Long Time To Grow A Mountain,’ developed in collaboration with programmer Sushant Chakraborty, the audience, armed with a joystick, enter a subterranean maze in south Gujarat in 1962. They are searching for a poem written by a poet, whose diary entries, chronicling a survey of the Sahyadri foothills as a travelogue, become the audio narration of the game. However, in a matter of minutes, the players hit a rock and turn into sediment. One can only engage with the game for a few minutes until, by the end of the day, the screen is only a mass of sediment left behind by several players. Similarly, muralist and illustrator Sadhana Prasad challenges us to face an uncertain future by creating a large mural which is seemingly a utopian island city (inspired by Mumbai) with everything chugging along in harmony. But if you pan an iPad Pro in front of it, fractures and fault lines jump out through the screen as the city teeters under the weight of its own waste and pollution.
Sashikanth Thavudoz, winner of the 2024 ‘The Future is Born of Art’ commission, led by BMW India and IAF, has been carrying a pocket-sized device called PlantWave for the last two months. It records ‘plant music’ by monitoring electric signals of plants as sound. Thavudoz has used this sonification technology in his large-scale installation of wooden poles, light boxes and music called ‘Symphony of Nature: The Harmonic Forest’ through which viewers can walk through. “Many artist-activists are using art to protest environmental degradation. But they themselves use iPhones. We are so inextricably connected to technology now. It’s very hard to avoid it,” says Thavudoz.
Eco flex: Bags made with flex material used in the IAF facade made by Thukral and Tagra.
The travelling exhibition, ‘Critical Zones. In Search of a Common Ground’, co-produced by the ZKM Karlsruhe and Max Mueller Bhavan in Mumbai features multidisciplinary artist Sonia Mehra Chawla who has collaborated with scientists from a Chennai-based research institute which studies mangrove forests. Her project ‘Critical Membrane’ goes on to drive home the fragility of our depleting mangrove ecosystems by blowing up images of its microbial biomass in petri dishes and inviting the viewer to experience an artistic, scientific and philosophical simulation of its depths, in an almost planetarium-like setting. “The role of scientists is not just delivering data to artists or for artists to simply illustrate scientific research. That’s not true collaboration. ‘Critical Zones’ allows for more long-term engagement between artists and the scientific community to develop a shared language,” says Mira Hirtz, co-curator of the exhibition.
