We Are Still Alive: Strategies In Surviving The Anthropocene
We Are Still Alive: Strategies in Surviving the Anthropocene poses some important ecological questions through reclaimed materials and conscientious art.
The great outdoors was dedicated to the wild at the India Art Fair, 2020, which is why we saw outdoor art projects, ranging from large scale interactive installations to sculpture, by leading artists invoking the ecological crises that our world is facing today. Noticeable among the large wooden drops of rain by Chennai based artist Vijay Pichumani, were the minimal yet highly evocative works of Rathin Barman and Anita Dube.
Titled Defunct Architectural Space the piece is an agglomeration of skeletal forms, edifices packed one into the other, like sentinels throwing their ghostly shadows over the city. While seeking to ‘interact’ with the outdoors, Barman and Dube’s sculptural installations interrogated the “urbanity and the abjection of the world as brought on by the extreme ecological crisis,” to quote their artist statement. The installation was presented by MASH India as a Sculptural Space at India Art Fair from Jan 30 – Feb 2, 2020 as part of the Outdoor Art Project P01 & P02 NSIC Exhibition Grounds, Okhla Industrial Estate.
The second chapter to this outdoor excavation, was the collection of installations, We Are Still Alive: Strategies in Surviving the Anthropocene curated by Dr. Arshiya Lokhandwala (Jan 21 – Feb 2, 2020) at the India International Centre, Gandhi King Memorial Plaza, at 40, Max Mueller Marg, New Delhi.
MASH Sculptural Space, in partnership with India International Centre, New Delhi, presented the exhibition featuring the sculptures of seven artists. Conceived as a public art project the show features artworks from Achia Anzi, Asim Waqif, Arunkumar H.G., Atul Bhalla, Priyanka Chowdhury, Ravi Agarwal, Sultana Zana and Vibha Galhotra.
Priyanka Choudhary, Material: Stained Glass, acrylic paint and wood.
What was most evocative about this set of works was their rawness and appealingly natural materials. Whether it was the wooden and glass-faced display boxes by Anzi that held within it innocent looking objects like watering cans and old style washing boards that silently await the ever-evading water to make them functional, or Arun r H.G’s architectonic trees created out of reclaimed wood, titled Timeline of Backwash, the message was of an ongoing crisis where water, air and even sunlight, previously thought of as endless and free for all, have now been reduced to commodities over which there is scarcity, fear and inevitably war. These humble objects created by the artists hint powerfully towards the ongoing crisis without becoming verbose or panic driven. Having said that though there is a fair sense of chaos that emanates from Asim Waqif’s assemblage of doors and parts from vehicle factories, in his series titled Collapse, Analysis, Mayapuri, 2019.
The exhibition focuses on the present climate global crisis facing people around the world and hopes to address these issues through a public art project. The exhibition opened on January 20, 2020 and will be open to the public from January 21 to February 2, 2020.
Atul Bhalla, Untitled (Nothing Reached Home) in wood
Atul Bhalla evokes the trope of the empty jerrycan that is used by the working class usually living in slums and shanties to collect water. Sculptured out of reclaimed wood the object appears alone and forgotten as it stands empty of its precious cargo, by the sink which awaits once more the elusive water that does not quite arrive in Bhalla’s rendition Untitled (Nothing Reached Home).
Ravi Aggarwal, Have you seen the flowers on the river?
Ravi Aggarwal’s set of photographs that have been mounted as public signages and maps trace the genda phool (marigold flower) industry, from it being picked, packed and redistributed among its vendors. This particular flower is pertinent to the Indian context since it an important offering and part of every religious ceremony be it birth, marriage and death. “Have you seen the flowers on the river?” Is Aggarwal’s gentle yet persistent query into the ultimate resting place for the flowers themselves, after they have served humankind for their great religious sanctimony, do they then lie as debris floating on a river polluting its waters?
Vibha Galhotra, bird nest in concrete
Vibha Galhotra’s metaphor of large concrete slabs mounted by a diaphanous bird-nest says it all, how nature will find ways of slipping into manmade structures and making it their own. The other sculpture of a globe-like structure encased in concrete barely retaining its biomorphic form poses another dilemma and questions mankind’s intention to perhaps change the very shape and structure of the world into a concrete block with no natural matter left. The questions are scary and unfortunately not too far away from the truth.
One could say that the exhibition quite successfully focuses on the present climate global crisis facing people around the world and hopes to address these issues through a public art project.
Text by Georgina Louella Maddox
Images courtesy MASH
MASH is an online magazine dedicated to the creative arts, crafts, architecture and design from India and the world. The magazine features in- depth conversations with leading artists and creatives, articles on the contemporary arts and cultural landscape. Find us at www.mashindia.com and on @mash_india.
Find out more about artists, galleries and art collectors:
rathinbarman.weebly.com/biocv.html
www.ficart.org/priyanka-choudhary-c13
www.atulbhalla.com
