Hand loomed textile processed in organic dye, Metal structure, Jesmonite, Indigo, Nature wax, river shells, mixed media prints and Sounds from the field research. 2022-23
Installed as part of the MA Art and Ecology Degree Show at Goldsmiths, University of London
This is an ongoing project, where I am interested in river ecology and Hydrotrauma in South Asian agrarian landscape. Fragmented ‘edifices’ traced from the blueprint of Hydroelectric dams built on the ‘Teesta’ river conjure up an abandoned eroded site. Using infrastructure as a form of narrative, addressing the malleability of land and water; their impact on legislation systems, colonisations and centralised economy- Almanacs, Sounds and blueprints (নীলনকশা) investigate the extraction of natural resources, biodiversity in and around the dam construction site, while thinking with the riverbed, indigenous knowledge, peoples resistance and interspecies entanglements.
340 x 709 x 709 (Dimension variable)
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In this second Iteration in London, the sound composition, recorded in/outside the Dam, in and around the riverbeds has been incorporated to achieve the sense of place. By creating a para-fictional installation, I altered infrastructures into unstable, translucent and malleable entities to reclaim the power to the unvoiced. Publicly unavailable architectural Blueprints of Teesta Dam, archives and almanacs related to river policies, imaginations and rituals have been transferred into cyanotype prints and drawings to make them accessible to all.
In the first iteration of the project at Dhaka Art Summit, I have created a para-fictional demo inspired by ‘Blocked’ as a form of protest that indigenous and marginalised local people use to rescue their lands, rivers and natural resources from authoritarian corporations. Even though they fail to fight against big corporations, their statement is clear and powerful enough to be visible. This symbolic protest is a vigil against dam building and water course changing in the Teesta basin. The barren land talks about erosion and destruction of the cultivable land where organic Tie-dye and hand loom fabric brings the life and ecological practices of the river communities to the fore.
