NEELNAKSHA (নীলনকশা)
2022-24



Hand loomed textile processed in organic dye, Metal structure, Eroded soil, Scrap metal, Indigo, Hand-written poem on an old diary page, Cyanotype, mixed media prints, Sound composition from field recording .

1100 x 540 x 450 cm
As Install in the the MFA Graduate Show at HFBK Hamburg, GE



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 infrastructures as a form of narrative, addressing the malleability of land and water; their impact on legislation systems; colonial knowledge epitome 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.


The project dive deep into the indigenous resistance against colonial extractive and epistemological mechanisms, anthropogenic activity on the riverine landscape and how different modes of ‘infrastructures’ control the water bodies and affect biodiversity. I believe, to comprehend the macro corpus of the global climate breakdown, these situated micro voices of vulnerabilities and resistances are of utmost importance.



In this iteration here, the sound composition, recorded in/outside the Dam, in and around the riverbeds has been incorporated to achieve the sense of place. In the installation, I altered infrastructures into unstable, translucent and malleable entities to reclaim the power to the unvoiced local peoples.

Install was inspired from Eastern European post soviet monuments and brutalist architectures in barren landscapes to bring the familiarityto the context towards the spectators. Publicly unavailable architectural Blueprints of Teesta Dam, archives and almanacs related to river policies, land surveys and colonial imaginations have been transferred into cyanotype prints and drawings to make them accessible to all.



All the blue colours used in this installation came from organic Indigo leaves. Indigo has a significant anti colonial connotation in the south asian context. Farmers had to cultivate Indigo in their lands against their will under british colonial regime. Indigo revolt was one of the earliest and most important anti colonial revolt against the british colony. Those highly patterned and almost weightless structures alter the heavy patriarchal concrete construction of Dams and barrages into a powerless one and bring back the concentration on the marginalised peoples practices. This way there could be a rhetoric with power structure and hierarchy. This historically charged 'blue' not only reflects on its material properties related to paint and dye but also shed light on the political and ecological dimensions related to the painting history.



The project dive deep into the indigenous resistance against colonial extractive and epistemological mechanisms, anthropogenic activity on the riverine landscape and how different modes of ‘infrastructures’ control the water bodies and affect biodiversity. I believe, to comprehend the macro corpus of the global climate breakdown, these situated micro voices of vulnerabilities and resistances are of utmost importance.