What comes to mind when you see crows perched on electric wires, suddenly getting electrocuted or labourers toil under the scorching sun at construction sites, or oceans choking on plastic, spitting remnants onto the shore, or when clock towers stand as a silent witness to time, seasons, and climate change?
Are we running out of clean, open spaces with each ticking second? Are our cities marching towards destruction at the hands of their own occupants? While this is our everyday reality, Urban Shock, an ongoing exhibition urges us to pause, reflect and reconsider our urban spaces. This display is presented by young artists from Diana’s Art Room studios.
Diana Shatish, one of the curator’s of the show, says, “The kids are studying about a lot of artists who have talked about current events and have voiced out various social and mental concerns like a white genre. As part of our after study, we started this. We just thought it was a great idea to culminate our voices through the art exhibition.”
Students between ages five and 18 go to this art school in the city. Diana shares, “The studio is a non-judgment and non-competitive space where the children come together to experiment and explore art with freedom.” One such exploration is this exhibition. The group was discussing art history during one of their contrast study sessions when the kids came up with this idea based on their experience. “They visit their villages during summer. When they return to the city, they find it weird,” points out Diana.
One of the children exclaimed that back in their village, they would pluck fresh vegetables from farms, cook and eat them, but in the city, the same vegetables are purchased and brought home wrapped in a plastic bag. There also came questions like, why do we have to build a twenty-storey building when there is not enough drinking water in the city for the people? “Just like that, the conversation panned out and turned into an inquiry-based approach. Then we interviewed people around us, their family members to understand why events happened the way they were,” she adds. This idea grew into an exhibition.
“I got inspired by the movie Moana and how Te Fiti, Mother Earth, is so important. I tried to put it in a painting as if mother Earth is sinking in a sea of its own trash,” notes Mahi Kelunni Asha. This 11-year-old titled her work ‘The Sickening Sea’. “The sea, once a symbol of life, has become an unforgiving force, swallowing the Earth and showing the consequences of neglect. This painting calls attention to the urgent need to address climate change and environmental harm before it’s too late,” she says. Through her work, Mahi sends a message that the more trash humans generate, the sooner the earth is going to decay.
Taking inspiration from trash, Eashaan SP, a student at The Indian Public School, created his artwork, ‘Power of Life’. His work shows how life will be after humans disappear from the face of earth. “The painting is of a city that is extinct, yet covered by greenery. It shows life finding a way. For example: the butterflies indicate that life is still taking place in an environmental area,” he says.
Eashaan gets his artistic inspiration from world around us. One of these paintings shows the construction of a metro. “It shows how workers perform dangerous and risky jobs every day in the making of a bridge or a building,” he adds. Pillars numbered, JCBs at work, the sun raising temperature and the workers in their yellow hats — these details were captured in his painting ‘Daily Lives’.
By simply showing our surroundings, places we visit often, activities that we do, waste that we throw has a huge impact on our environment. This message echoed through the walls of The Gallery at InKo Centre, captivating audiences and challenging their behaviours.
Urban Shock is on display until April 5.