Kheti Badi: Chinar Shah’s Photographs of her Digital Farm

Kheti Badi is a series of photographs by Chinar Shah, made as screenshots on the (once) popular Facebook game FarmVille. These images capture discrete parts and details of the digital farm created and maintained by the artist on the online game. These already low-resolution screenshots were further pixelated by the artist to exaggerate the artificial and comic appearance of the land, its produce and the characters of the farmers. The series presents a close view of the absurdity of this digital representation of farming engaged in by millions of Facebook users, while the divide between “real world” farmers and those playing similar games only continues to grow.

In her artist statement accompanying the work, Shah recounts that it was in “…second standard of school when I learnt that India is an agriculture-based economy. I had never set foot on a farm back then. Today, after all these years, I have a farm on a virtual online game. I harvest my crops, feed my animals and buy pixels of land. It is my negotiation of being a farmer online and a practising photographer away from the keyboard that has resulted in this body of work.” The project was, in fact, informed by her professional work with a Non-Governmental Organisation which focused on issues affecting the lives of farmers across the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat in India.

The starkly pixelated quality of these images foregrounds the cartoon-like aesthetic of the game, pointing to a wholly assimilated capitalist-agrarian network in which one imagines labour intensive processes like tilling and harvesting as just another click away. And where produce appears perfectly identical and photogenic for the consumer’s delight. 

All images by Chinar Shah.

Click on the image to view the album