FORGET GOLD - INVEST IN WATER
Forget Gold - Invest in Water was conceived by Allan Parkar and facilitated by Allan Parkar and Chinar Shah for the Srishti Interim Semester. This project was supported by Srishti Live and Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology.
FORGET GOLD - INVEST IN WATER
MOKSHA GANDHI End of The Day Water, for India, has long been a cradle for it’s dead. Across the country, elaborate last rites and rituals take place beside water bodies. Shot at Eliott’s beach in Chennai, these wooden scaffolds belong to pandits who perform similar rituals on this beach. The collections of objects naturally mimic funeral pyres and have come to resemble the deceased.
SMRUTI MULCHANDANI The waves wave back Do you remember the last time you were at a beach? Do you remember the breeze and how it brought a cool spray of water that left your lips tasting a bit salty? The building and crashing of waves, and the feeling of strength that came from watching the receding foam created by the sheer force of gravity? I remember all this from my childhood visits to beaches, but what I remember more distinctly is the foam from the waves last week. It was soap, not the pure, salty force of water. This is a cyanotype print of the waves on the Elliot beach in Chennai, gorgeous in their bubbly beauty, but holding contaminants and effluents enough to tip the delicate balance of nature. Cyanotype on cotton
MAANVI CHOWDHARY Lakes, Rivers and the Sea This project focuses on the idea of belonging and settlements. Taking scenes from the film Subarnarekha (1965), a film based around post partition India, the project extends and incorporates the idea of place and belonging. The film juxtaposes the water bodies around Bangalore and Chennai with the river Subarnarekha of the film. It’s an amalgamation of the past and present in relation to water bodies of India. Scenes used from film Subarnarekha (1965) directed by Ritwik Ghatak
KRISHNA BHAT 2050 By 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the sea. The Great Pacific Garbage patch spans 1.6 million kilometers and is three times the size of France. Approximately 100 million sea creatures perish each year due to plastic debris. These cyanotype images mimicking marine life are created out of plastic and other garbage found on the beaches in Chennai. The images call for an immediate reflection on the lifestyle choices we make while there’s still time. Cyanotypes
VIDUSHI GUPTA SHROBONTIKA DASGUPTA Maacher Jhol Maacher Jhol is a nostalgic trip to the beaches. The waves, the wind, the chaos in the calm, the times spent with loved ones – everything we wish to see obscures our collective failure to see the damage we bring to the ocean when we are busy creating memories. A sight through this window is the vision of our deeds. Maacher jhol is more than a childhood dish – it is a confusion; the oil burns the extra seeds and wrong ingredients which makes the right recipe we have grown up with. Digital Prints, Window
NIDHI BINU Transient Exploring the fleeting moments of life, Transient is a series that captures people’s interactions with the sea. Just as one never steps into the same ocean twice, these ephemeral moments can never be repeated. Archival Inkjet prints
PURNIMA BHUTORIA AADYA AGARWAL Performance: Ocean Being As we turn away our gaze, shield our eyes and wield our weapons, raise them to lakes, rivers and other natural bodies, grief filters in slow. It fills the capacity of regret. We mourn its fall at our hands; and watch ourselves following down. We break the earth we stand on, pump poison in its veins, how can we then distance ourselves from the water we are made of? This performance captures the progression of guilt through our human bodies. It proposes that guilt and regret are precursors of grief. As such, we experience the five stages of grief even when we think about our relationship with water and how we have plundered it.
PURNIMA BHUTORIA AADYA AGARWAL Between the Lines When does the water rise and when does it fall back? I study the time between the waves, the time it takes for a chorus of the ocean to swarm at my feet, or to lose itself in itself. Watch its careful recoil in anticipation of the rocks and coarse sand. This duplicitous charge upon it, that it both loves and is afraid of the shore, begs me to consider the story between the lines. This exhibit is a reaction to the relationship between land and sea. It views lines and structures on the beach as sculpture, objects that rolled along the waves, those which watch them, and the frames through which they look. Archival pigment prints
GAYATRI GAJARE Framing Consent “Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” Mrs Dalloway - Viginia Woolf Archival injet prints
ABHA DESHMUKH RAHI KULKARNI SRUJANA DAKE CHARVI UPADHYE SANIKA PABALKAR Neglected In India, newspapers are read in hundreds of languages and are one of the primary mediums for acquiring news. Today’s newspapers create distractions and illusions as much as satisfying their real purpose of providing actual news. With this project, we draw attention to the neglect of the things that really matter and without which we cannot exist, for example, water. We have selected a set of pages from newspapers showing gold auction numbers and overprinted photographs taken on our journey to understand the pollution of water bodies. It depicts the current water scenario and how it has become overshadowed by our materialistic needs. Newspaper Prints
ABHA DESHMUKH RAHI KULKARNI SRUJANA DAKE CHARVI UPADHYE SANIKA PABALKAR Water Bodies In India, civilisations were mostly centred around water bodies which have exerted their influence on our cultures. In the past, many artists painted lakes, rivers and oceans, and these paintings are still part of popular culture today. The paintings depict these waters as very clean, serene and holy; something that would be seen as idealistic today. We wanted to show the contrast between how we used to treat water bodies and how we treat them today. Digital Prints
ABHA DESHMUKH RAHI KULKARNI SRUJANA DAKE CHARVI UPADHYE SANIKA PABALKAR Weird flex but ok We visit photo studios with the expectation of getting idealised photographs made with perfect landscapes as backgrounds. When it comes to photography, we often have unrealistic expectations that prevent us from looking at what is before us. With this image, we are questioning whether people would still take a picture in front a backdrop that it is not ideal, but closer to the environmental reality. Flex (6ft x 4ft)
ATHARVA BARVE ANSHIKA SHARMA Hazy Ends An image is like the ghost of a moment. Caught between glass, we present a series of photographs that try to capture the life and slow decay of our lifeline – water and it’s surroundings. The materiality of glass emphasises the fragile nature of water as a resource. Acetate sheets (prints) and Glass