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A Transnational Revolutionary: Dr Savitri Sawhney on her father Pandurang Khankhoje

Anisha Baid Jan 19, 2021

Pandurang Khankhoje’s work at the agricultural school in Mexico is survived by many photographs taken by the celebrated photographer Tina Modotti.

M. Sain of Darjeeling: The Painted Photographs of Bengal

Ankan Kazi Jan 25, 2021

From the early twentieth-century, painted photographs were widely produced, distributed and collected. They represented a way of balancing the style of painting with the practice of photography.

The Agrarian Revolution and Tina Modotti: In Conversation with Dr Savitri Sawhney

Anisha Baid Feb 09, 2021

In this continuing conversation with Savitri Sawhney, we dwell on Pandurang Khankhoje’s work as an agrarian–responsible for the establishment of more than thirty free agricultural schools in Mexico.

Finding Archives Where There Are None: Documenting a Displaced Existence in the Forests of Chitwan

Anisha Baid Feb 10, 2021

As an online presentation of sustained anthropological and photographic research, the website provokes the documentary modality, weaving together the various social realities of a wounded landscape.

Indigenous Pasts, Sustainable Futures: Images from The Skin of Chitwan

Anisha Baid Feb 10, 2021

The Skin of Chitwan, an online exhibition by the Nepal Picture Library is a manifestation of the ongoing research project Indigenous Pasts, Sustainable Futures that attempts to document, archive and share Nepal’s marginalised histories.

Seeding New Visions: A Reflection on Munem Wasif's Seeds Shall Set Us Free II

Ankan Kazi Feb 10, 2021

Exhibited at the Centre Pompidou and Taipei Biennial 2019, Seeds Shall Set Us Free II represents another move toward consolidating the core themes in the work of the photographer Munem Wasif.

Koodankulam: Amirtharaj Stephen’s Documentation of the Protests

Gulmehar Dhillon Feb 15, 2021

Amirtharaj Stephen’s set of photographs titled Koodankulam: In My Backyard documents the protests by the local community against the Indian and Russian Governments' commissioning of the Koodankulam power plant.

The Ecology of Cinema: Debashree Mukherjee on Bombay Hustle

Ketaki Varma Mar 01, 2021

Mukherjee’s Bombay Hustle reveals itself as an ambitious history of these networks in Indian cinema. It offers a distinct portrait of the Bombay film industry during the silent to talkie transition of the 1920s–40s.

Film as Social History: Debashree Mukherjee on Bombay Hustle

Ketaki Varma Mar 02, 2021

In the second session of this two-part conversation about Bombay Hustle, Mukherjee discusses the role of women during the transition to the talkie, the novel ways in which she researched the book, and why she thinks fans are an essential part of the cine-ecology.

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

Anisha Baid Mar 09, 2021

Kheti Badi is a series of photographs by Chinar Shah, made as screenshots on the (once) popular Facebook game FarmVille.

What is a Cine-Ecology? Scenes from Debashree Mukherjee’s Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City

Ketaki Varma Mar 12, 2021

“Filmmaking depends on a dense network of human and nonhuman energies,” writes Debashree Mukherjee as she explains the photographs in her recent book Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City.

Who is a Cine-Worker? Scenes from Debashree Mukherjee’s Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City

Ketaki Varma Mar 13, 2021

Debashree Mukherjee’s book Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City excavates the histories of people and places that make up the cine-ecology of erstwhile colonial Bombay, particularly between the late 1920s and the early 1940s—a period characterised by the shift from silent to talkie films.

Reframing Generic Images: Landscape Photographs by Nihaal Faizal

Anisha Baid Mar 19, 2021

Through minimalist artistic interventions, Nihaal Faizal reframes the contexts of the images and objects that he appropriates.

Fabricating the Documentary Image: Shubham Kumar’s Negotiations with Violence and Representation

Anisha Baid Apr 05, 2021

Shubham Kumar is an artist from Gaya, Bihar. His practice explores the dialogue between image making and histories of violence through material engagements with painting and photography.

One, Many, And Those Lost In Between: The Photographic Works of Basir Mahmood

Anisha Baid Apr 13, 2021

Basir Mahmood is an artist and filmmaker based in Lahore and Amsterdam. His photographic work includes poetically constructed images that reflect upon social and historical realities embedded within the terrain of the mundane.

Borderlands, Resistance and Archival Ethics: Conversations with Laura Saunders

Najrin Islam Apr 27, 2021

Working in Southern Arizona and South-West Virginia, Saunders discussed her work on the Mexico-United States of America borderlands, their attendant histories of migration and the narratives of criminality that they engender.

Exhausted Geographies of Karachi: In Conversation with Abeera Kamran, Shahana Rajani and Zahra Malkani

Anisha Baid May 02, 2021

Exhausted Geographies is a Karachi-based collaborative publishing practice by Abeera Kamran, Shahana Rajani and Zahra Malkani.

Towards a Textured Counter-Visuality: In Conversation with the Exhausted Geographies Team

Anisha Baid May 04, 2021

In this continuing conversation around Exhausted Geographies—a Karachi-based collaborative publishing practice by Abeera Kamran, Shahana Rajani and Zahra Malkani—we talk about the accompanying web project of struggle.

Harvesting Images: Field Notes with Dharmendra Prasad

Annalisa Mansukhani May 26, 2021

Based in Guwahati, Assam, Dharmendra Prasad is an artist with a practice that spans the mediums of installation, video, painting, photography and performance.

Storytelling through Photography: In Conversation with Aishwarya Arumbakkam

Anisha Baid Jun 13, 2021

As a part of a series of conversations with artists from the recently concluded exhibition Growing Like A Tree held at Ishara Art Foundation in Dubai, Anisha Baid spoke to photographer and filmmaker Aishwarya Arumbakkam.

Song Narratives: Molla Sagar’s Documentary Films

Veeranganakumari Solanki Jun 25, 2021

Inspired by Ritwik Ghatak’s cinematic ideologies, Molla Sagar’s work explores cultural and ethnic practices that speak about basic human rights and injustices in everyday encounters.

Liminality and Plurality: Sheelasha Rajbhandari and Sharareh Bajracharya on KT2077

Jyotsna Nambiar Aug 01, 2021

In this episode, we speak with Sheelasha Rajbhandari, one of the curators, and Sharareh Bajracharya, the director of this year's edition.

Synergies of a Site: Tracing Dharmendra Prasad’s Imagination of the Agrarian

Annalisa Mansukhani Aug 09, 2021

Dharmendra Prasad’s artistic practice reads the agrarian landscape, its conflicts and cultural contexts through anthropological, folkloric and ecological vocabularies.

Sounding the Future: Queerness and Post-Human Love in Tejal Shah’s Video Art

Annalisa Mansukhani Aug 15, 2021

Identifying as ecosexual, Tejal Shah’s interests lie in the areas of sexuality, gender and consciousness as well as exploring interspecies relationships between ecologies.

Photographing the Act of Rot: On Maksud Ali Mondal’s Biotope

Najrin Islam Aug 17, 2021

Maksud Ali Mondal’s practice is characterised by the observation of fungal life and creating conditions for their transformation, with the understanding that no state in their mutation is final.

Conflict Sites and Militant Botany: Moonis Ahmad Shah’s Gul-e-Curfew

Najrin Islam Aug 31, 2021

Moonis Ahmad Shah charts a taxonomic model for botanical forms that have seemingly evolved in tandem with the constraints, dilations and extractions prevalent in contested zones.

Performing the Nuclear Sublime: Himali Singh Soin’s static range

Najrin Islam Sep 09, 2021

Himali Singh Soin’s performative work, static range, is situated at the intersection of archives, science, the speculative and the anecdotal.

Facing the Earth: On Tareque Masud’s Adam Surat

Ankan Kazi Sep 16, 2021

Tareque Masud’s first film was a documentary that he shot over seven years in the environs of the decolonial painter Sheikh Mohammed Sultan’s home in Narail, in the Jessore district of Bangladesh.

Women of the Sea: Palani Kumar Documents the Seaweed Farmers of Tamil Nadu

Gulmehar Dhillon Oct 20, 2021

In 2019, during a fellowship with the PARI, M. Palani Kumar, a photographer from Madurai, headed to the sea with seaweed harvesters from Bharathinagar, near Mayakulam village of Thiruppullani block.

A Tree at the End of the World: Salomé Jashi’s Taming the Garden

Annalisa Mansukhani Nov 08, 2021

Quietly cryptic in its cinematic absurdity, Taming the Garden is a film by Georgian filmmaker Salomé Jashi that builds the strange story of a billionaire who collects trees from the countryside for his own private garden-island.

On Acts of Devouring: Days of Cannibalism

Najrin Islam Nov 13, 2021

Days of Cannibalism by Teboho Edkins is situated at the intersection of the Western and the documentary―a hybrid of genres that combines the aesthetic of observational vérité with a meta-commentary on power.

Fluvial Embodiments: On Abhinava Bhattacharyya’s Jamnapaar

Najrin Islam Nov 23, 2021

“Jamnapaar” translates to “trans-Yamuna,” and refers to the eponymous river in a state of passage—running through Delhi, dividing the city into two relatively favourable halves.

In Person: An Elegy for Ecology with Sharbendu De

Prabhakar Duwarah Dec 25, 2021

For the tenth episode of In Person, we speak with Sharbendu De about his ongoing show An Elegy for Ecology (2016–ongoing) at the Shrine Empire Gallery, Delhi.

Planetary Visions: On Manjot Kaur’s Constant Motion

Mallika Visvanathan Dec 23, 2021

Manjot Kaur’s diverse practice involves different media such as painting and drawing, as well as digital video, performance and performative installations.

Nationhood, Interrupted: On Moonis Ahmad Shah’s Material for a Love Letter to Comrades from the Subcontinent

Najrin Islam Dec 29, 2021

Across a diptych-like frame, Moonis Ahmad Shah places disparate elements in dialogue with one another to foreground the absurdity embedded in the arrangement of landscapes per territorial politics.

The Green Screen: On Pooja Iranna’s We Are Going Green

Ankan Kazi Jan 03, 2022

Offering a sarcastic look at practices of greenwashing, Iranna’s film successfully plants a continuum between planetary and global thinking for a cleaner future.

Visions of the Apocalypse: Ecological Disaster through Social Media and Myth

Sukanya Deb Jan 29, 2022

Paribartana Mohanty’s video work Four Songs of Apocalypse (2021) uses mythology and folk traditions to look at narratives of disaster.

Smoke and Fire in Nocturne: Ahmed Rasel’s Investigation of Bangladesh’s Brickfields

Ankan Kazi Jan 31, 2022

Ahmed Rasel’s project Nocturne presents a set of evolving perspectives on the complex, messy history of brick kilns in Bangladesh.

Experimenting with Mediums: On Sunita Maharjan’s Mixed Media Works

Sheelasha Rajbhandari Apr 21, 2022

In this on-site conversation between Sheelasha Rajbhandari and visual artist and art educator Sunita Maharjan, we look at the installation Above the Earth, Beneath the Sky, where wheat grows out of tall iron pillars.

New Natures: In Conversation with Ravi Agarwal

Veeranganakumari Solanki May 10, 2022

In this episode of In Person, Ravi Agarwal walks us through the various aspects of ecology that the exhibition New Natures: A Terrible Beauty is Born explores.

The Forest as Assemblage: In Conversation with Pujita Guha for the Forest Curriculum

Najrin Islam May 19, 2022

Premised on a cultural-activist ethos, the Forest Curriculum was founded in 2018 by artist-curator Abhijan Toto and media theorist Pujita Guha.

Ecological Fiction: In Conversation with Noémie Goudal

Rahaab Allana Jul 07, 2022

In her series titled Phoenix (2021) along with the moving image installation Inhale/Exhale (2021) seen at the Rencontres d’Arles, Noémie Goudal engages with staging and illusion.

Gardeners in the Wasteland: On Ishaan Ghose’s Jhilli (Discards)

Ankan Kazi Sep 05, 2022

Ishaan Ghose’s film unveils a delirious and slurred narrative of a group of friends who drift in and out of each other’s lives as they attempt to make a living from Dhapa, or dream-up hare-brained schemes of escape that are doomed to failure.

Creation Myths: On Vipin Vijay’s Anthropocene Relooked

Ankan Kazi Sep 08, 2022

The big questions about civilizational beginnings and their difficult existence in our besieged contemporary moment find a clearer statement of purpose in Vipin Vijay's documentary essay.

Fear of the Fragment: On Vipin Vijay’s small-scale societies

Ankan Kazi Sep 12, 2022

Vipin Vijay's video work small-scale societies confronts the scale of civilizational narratives through the defiant partiality of fragments.

All That Breathes: Gazing Upward and Outward

Najrin Islam Nov 21, 2022

Shaunak Sen's film focuses on the affectionately combative relationship between brothers Nadeem Shehzad and Mohammed Saud, and their younger cousin and assistant, Salik Rehman.

Documenting Theatre: Sridhar Balasubramaniyam’s Chameleon Land

Prabhakar Duwarah Dec 21, 2022

Chameleon Land is a photo project by Sridhar Balasubramaniyam that documents Manalmagudi Theatre Land’s entire process as they prepare for and stage the production of Puzhuthimarap Paravaigal.

Encountering Loss in Growing Like a Tree: Sent a Letter

Sukanya Deb Jan 16, 2023

The third iteration of Growing Like a Tree begins with an invitation in the form of a fossilised edition of Sent a Letter (2008) by Dayanita Singh to the curators Bunu Dhungana and Sadia Marium Rupa.

And Quiet Flows the Adi Ganga: Re-imagining Urban Space through Riverine Ecology

Sujaan Mukherjee Feb 01, 2023

Madhuja Mukherjee’s installation, Kolikatar Nakshi-kotha was an attempt to create a visual narrative of the channel, using it as both route and method for revisiting and remapping the city.

In Person: Ikamo Tlalli—Earthless by Mónica Alcázar-Duarte

Arundhati Chauhan Mar 17, 2023

In Ikamo-Tlalli, Alcázar-Duarte dons the figure of the Beekeeper, dressed in bright red and disrupting the green and earth-hued camouflage around her.

In Person: Residency Open Studio at PhotoKTM5

Arundhati Chauhan Mar 22, 2023

The residents discuss their processes as they visited various areas in Kawasoti, learnt about the community conservation efforts and the individual works they produced.

Space, Placemaking and Belonging: Shaping South Asia

Mallika Visvanathan Apr 26, 2023

Exploring degrees of belonging and placemaking through recollection, resistance and solidarity, the symposium provided a platform for some of the experiences that shape our understanding of South Asia.

In Person: Notations on Time with Sabih Ahmed

Sandhini Poddar and Sabih Ahmed Apr 28, 2023

Notations on Time explores ontological systems that reveal how artists from the region and its diaspora think about aesthetics, existence, remembrance and futurity.

Fables of Development: Gaurav Puri’s Dhundgiri Ke Phool

Santasil Mallik May 05, 2023

Having premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) earlier this year, the film maps the disintegrating character of Soni, a village in West Bengal, when the construction of an ultramodern airport is set about in its vicinity.

The Affordances of Precarity: In Conversation with Arko Datto

Annalisa Mansukhani May 17, 2023

Thematically, Arko Datto explores forced migration, techno-fascism, surveillance in the digital panopticon, disappearing islands, nocturnal realms and the psychosomatic stress of captive animals.

Propositions for Fleeting Sights: In Conversation with Arko Datto

Annalisa Mansukhani May 19, 2023

Datto’s proclivity for the longue durée in photographic projects allows him to develop and communicate the documentary in photography with a sensitivity that accords climate change the space to unfold in his images as it does on the ground.

Technotropies of the Otherwise: A Reading in Submergence

Najrin Islam Jun 05, 2023

Staged at the Theaterhaus Gessneralle, Zurich, from 30 March to 6 April 2023, Technotropies of the Otherwise by artist duo Stephanie Knobel and Samrat Banerjee is simultaneously a performance, film and installation that draws the viewer into an immersive pocket simulating aquatic textures.

A Camera Enters the Mind’s Eye: In Conversation with Vijay Sarathy

Radhika Sharma Sep 11, 2023

In this edited conversation, the photographer and visual artist Vijay Sarathy discusses his journey and how the medium allowed him to become a conservator of natural memories.

Following the Rhino: On Sahil Naik’s Karkadann of Land and the Dark Seas

Ankan Kazi Oct 13, 2023

Karkadann of Land and the Dark Seas seeks to investigate architecture as “witness” as well as “evidence”—including the symbolic structures adopted by myths as they seek to enter the domain of history.

In Search of Paradise: Bawa’s Garden by Clara Kraft Isono

Annalisa Mansukhani Nov 06, 2023

Mediated by a slow unravelling of history and memory, Bawa’s Garden (2022) by Clara Kraft Isono follows the work of renowned Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa.

The Intransience of Azure: Ri by Achal Mishra

Annalisa Mansukhani Nov 14, 2023

A testament to Mishra’s photographic imagination, Ri is a serenade, an open letter, a line drawing that offers itself up to be read and taken forward vividly and freely.

In Person: Clara Kraft Isono on Bawa’s Garden

Arundhati Chauhan Nov 24, 2023

In this edited conversation, Isono discusses her initial exposure to Bawa’s work while she was a student of architecture, the film’s experimental approach to the documentary form, and how the sound design and score contributed to the dream-like experience of static landscape and architecture.

Flags of Our (Migrating) Fathers: Fields of Punjab, Aflutter

Shankar Tripathi Dec 12, 2023

Fields Aflutter (2021–present), Peshawaria’s documentary interrogation of Punjab’s agrarian landscape, makes one thing abundantly clear from the beginning: there is nobody present to greet us in these photographs, for all those who lived here have left.

Seed, Soil, Rising: Turning: On Field and Work with Vidya Shivadas

Annalisa Mansukhani Dec 15, 2023

Turning: On Field and Work is curated by Vidya Shivadas, a New Delhi-based curator and director of the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA), as part of the 8th edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa, which opened on 15 December 2023.

Sprouting with Time: An Interview with Ravi Agarwal

Annalisa Mansukhani Dec 19, 2023

Time as a Mother is an exhibition by Ravi Agarwal and Damian Christinger that brings together seven artists and three poets, interacting with the poetics of time by reading and framing its intersections with the geological epoch of the Anthropocene and its evolving ecological conditions.

In Person: The Nights Will Follow the Days

Arundhati Chauhan Dec 22, 2023

The Nights Will Follow the Days, curated by Shalmali Shetty, proposes the spectral as a manifestation of memory. Exploring loss and belonging as they cut across place, time and identities, the exhibition is an iteration of the inaugural curatorial fellowship by the Art South Asia Project and Serendipity Arts Foundation.

Collaborative Seedings: Grounded Artistic Practices, Pedagogies and Questions

Pamudu Tennakoon Feb 01, 2024

The latest edition of Colomboscope, titled Way of the Forest, explores ecologies, histories, environments, pasts, presents, and most poignantly, collective and individual relationships with the environments that surround us.

Ritual Purity, Reigning Pollution: On Hari Katragadda’s Lost River

Ankita Ghosh Feb 12, 2024

By directly working with water collected from the river and all that comes with it, Hari Katragadda leaves it open to viewers to piece together meanings—to connect the dots in thinking through purity, pollution, rituality, religion, ecological destruction and decay.

Oceanic Revolutions: Two Refusals… by Suneil Sanzgiri

Arundhati Chauhan Mar 07, 2024

Two Refusals is the third film in an ongoing exploration by Suniel Sanzgiri into the past and postcolonial refusals in Goan history. The film interweaves 16mm footage shot in Goa, Mumbai, Lisbon and Sagres in Portugal with altered archival footage, snippets from anticolonial films, CGI animation, and a poetic narrative written by Sham-e-Ali Nayeem.

Weather(ing) Crisis: On 28° North and Parallel Weathers

Mallika Visvanathan Mar 15, 2024

The exhibition 28° North and Parallel Weathers presents an intervention that constitutes a long term seasonal preoccupation with water and its myriad conceptual possibilities.

Ecology, Crime and the State: The Sovereign Forest

Shranup Tandukar Mar 20, 2024

Encompassing documentary film and multimedia works, the exhibition chronicles the resistance movements of Odisha’s indigenous and local communities against government entities and corporations.

Collective Medias, Narrative Futures: Reading the Egaro Photo Festival

Ankita Ghosh Apr 06, 2024

Egaro (which translates to eleven in Bengali) spotlights work by eleven artists from the South-Asian region at each edition of the India Art Fair. Over the last few years, Egaro has garnered praise and have made an incredible mark towards visibilizing art practice from north-eastern India.

Daule Daule: Through the Tharu Lens

Alfa M. Shakya Apr 16, 2024

The Daule Daule exhibition gives the viewer a glimpse into the lives of the Tharu community of Nepal. It shows us moments from their everyday lives and also dives into their rich repository of indigenous knowledge.

Metonym, Anthropocene: Our Conspiring Hosts

Shivani Kasumra Apr 20, 2024

Telescoping across jamnapaar Delhi, Amazonian floods, villages dotting the coast of Odisha, oil fields of Assam, alluvial mounds in Kashmir, coastal Colombo and a National Park in Nepal, the exhibition Our Conspiring Hosts assembles a geography of disaster, dispossession, and damage, ravaged by the oft-cited watchword of our age: Anthropocene.

Of Landless Belonging: Amid the Villus by Sumathy Sivamohan

Banhi Sarkar May 09, 2024

The renowned Sri Lankan artist, poet, performer, filmmaker and academic Sumathy Sivamohan’s latest work, Amid the Villus (2022), is her first documentary project, offering a poignant exploration of lives intersected by land, conflict, displacement and memory.

The Shedding of Memory: Lament of a Tree by Iqra Tanveer

Shalmali Shetty May 16, 2024

The Pakistani artist and photographer Iqra Tanveer persistently gravitates towards Eastern philosophies around time and collective consciousness, in opposition to the largely Euro-centric approach of perceiving the world through the individual.

Discerning the Marginal: Trolley Times and Documenting Protest

Kamayani Sharma Jun 06, 2024

Trolley Times (2023) is less an archive or chronicle than a measure of a historic velocity, marked at different points by campsite longueurs and spirited agitation. Echoing its beginning, the film’s closing sequence foregrounds the parallels between agricultural and journalistic processes, and the harvest of grains and facts, gauging the times of the trolley.

Leavening the Image: Reflections on Weather Report with Tenzing Dakpa

Annalisa Mansukhani Jun 21, 2024

In this edited interview, Tenzing Dakpa unpacks his process of making, his relationship to the medium of photography, and the kinds of mediations it continues to produce for him.

Resonant Shells, Animated Bodies: Natasha Malik’s Film Experiments

Pramodha Weerasekera Jun 24, 2024

Natasha Malik’s experimental film The mirror gazed inward and caught a brief glimpse of another life in an illusion of infinite, in the eye of a dream. (2022) attempts to animate her painting a swim through time, concluded (2022).

A Tripod Made of Stone: Interview with CAMP’s Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumaran

Shweta Kishore Aug 30, 2024

In this edited conversation with Shweta Kishore, Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumaran speak about the inception of CAMP as an artistic collective and their continuing focus on decentering relations of being, seeing and being seen.

Cartographies of Control: Mapping Coastal Regulation Zones

Kavyasri Saravanan Sep 21, 2024

Historically, cartographic exercises have been used as potent instruments of state power, shaping territorial claims, resource allocation and social order as mechanisms of control. In India, an exemplary case is the delineation of Coastal Regulation Zones (CRZ) based on ecological sensitivity and development potential.