There was never a particular day. I have been in love with nature since forever,” says Jyotsna Dwivedi, a visual artist of Delhi, whose primary area of interest lies in the multi-disciplinary field of Critical Plant Studies and art. Born into a family of plant lovers, Dwivedi has spent a major part of her life either tending to nature, or enjoying it. “Taking care of plants and being in their presence is the most inspiring and peaceful thing for me,” she says.
Dwivedi, who has a terrace garden, considers nature her “natural habitat”. She says: “More than inspiration, my work is a reaction to nature.” During COVID-19, the terrace garden was a haven for her family. “In the midst of destruction and mayhem happening all around, the terrace was our haven. At that time, it was spring, nature was in bloom and yet I was thinking about death. Nature doesn’t care what is happening around. It will still bloom and be beautiful. In my artwork, I am trying to express this conundrum of my feelings and mental state around the beauty of nature,” she adds.
The enigma of nature
Dwivedi’s plant fictions depict human beings and plants engaging in power play and their inter-dependencies. The artist believes plants and humans criss-cross each other’s paths in numerous ways.
“Anthropocentric paths have been formed by scientific discoveries and research,” she says. According to her, though humans make man a central figure and emphasise on his agency vis-a-vis nature, the latter is an enigma.
Dwivedi documents her experiments with plants through drawings, photographs, collages, watercolour paintings and writings. She uses plant fiction as a mode of communication to argue for unleashing oneself from an anthropocentric mode of living, and finding symbiotic ways to exist with nature.
“I try to unravel the feelings of not being able to find resonance in nature for my experience of the impermanence of life and of ageing. At times, I question the idea of a benevolent ‘Mother Nature’. Nature seems neither benevolent nor malevolent,” she adds.
Her latest artwork series, ‘Dasht e Talab’, is loosely tied to the theme of struggling to be a part of nature, or struggling to be nature; it simultaneously explores the concept of time and aging in plants and humans. Dwivedi’s work is on display at Delhi’s Lalit Kala Akademi from October 28 to November 3.
Dwivedi interprets ‘Dasth’ as both forest and desert; in her lexicon, ‘Talab’ means desire. “A forest is a place filled with things meant for satiation and peace, while in a desert, desires cannot be fulfilled. The artworks, to an extent, depict my feelings about nature. It is a tussle that I am a part of nature but not entirely,” she explains.
Talking us through the many layers of development of her work, Dwivedi reveals that it starts with keeping plants in the studio to observe the effect of time on them. “This involves documentation of the stages of ageing in the plant by hand drawing and photography,” she adds. Eventually, it culminates into an artwork, which also includes her experience of living with the plant and assimilation of ideas that come from the readings of plant philosophy, literature and folklore.
Her favourite artwork from the series is ‘Vegetal Metamorphosis’—painted in multiple shades of purple, green, white and dirty yellow, it depicts women hanging around vibrant flora. What steals our attention is the depiction of a woman coming out of a cocoon. Dwivedi explains: “In that moment she is neither a human nor completely a part of nature. This becomes a perfect example of symbiotic living, a relationship of give and take.”
The search
A key focus of her work is finding where human beings stand in relation to vegetal life. “Is there a possibility of being in a mutually beneficent and symbiotic relationship with nature? Is there a space in our imagination where we can develop more intimate connections with plant life? And ultimately, do we know everything about nature? My endeavour is to imagine an existence in which personal connections can be formed with it,” she says.