River sutra of hidden hierarchies
English philosopher Herbert Spencer’s theory of evolution, popularised by Charles Darwin argues survival of the fittest, thereby leading to a natural process of selection and extinction. This theory often applies to creative minds and thinkers who flag the perils of their times. Visual artist Reena Kallat is a signaller of struggles. This time, in her ongoing solo presentation by Nature Morte in Delhi explores climate-related impact and the interconnectedness of our world.
The linkages of our contemporary lives came to be accentuated for Kallat during the pandemic years. She says, “I was collecting found images and archiving them. Patterns increasingly became more evident to me by the way climate events in one region influence those in another.” It became apparent that weather systems across the globe are interconnected and are becoming more intense, unpredictable, and amplifying the challenges we face.
Titled Zero Horizon, the show is both a physical boundary and a metaphorical one. Kallat explains, “The works include sound recordings of extinct bird species, which we only have access to through historical archives. While the birds may have disappeared because of habitat destruction, overhunting, or pollution, their songs, now lost to the natural world, are played through a sculpture, Requiem (the last call).”
The sculpture is modelled on an old pre-radar device from 20th-century warfare as a way of framing extinction as an aggressive intervention that leaves behind only silences in our history. Taking the issue further, a series of paintings show rivers drying up due to climate change, urbanisation, and environmental degradation. In Vortex, national borders that cut across contested river geographies come together to form a thumbprint. It stands out as a reminder that human mediation persistently reshapes and impacts natural landscape.
Kallat explains, “Rivers, mountains, and other natural boundaries shape regions organically but they do not inherently divide people or disrupt interdependence in the way human-made borders do. National borders, on the other hand, are often arbitrarily drawn, disregarding the communities living along them, the rivers that flow through them, and the dependence of humans and other species on shared natural resources.” She feels that these artificial boundaries often lead to conflict and disruption, impacting not just humans but the entire ecosystem.
A series of wall-mounted relief works present infographics on travel imbalance. Titled Pattern Recognition. They explore the shifting and persistently unequal politics of access and mobility. “The work takes the format of Snellen charts, typically used to test vision. I replace alphabets with maps of different countries, like trying to read the world through the lens of hidden hierarchies.” There are metaphors in the use of material for this work—electrical cords—symbolising the duality of global connectivity and barriers like fencing.
Kallat aspires for viewers to discover patterns when they engage with her creations. Aqua Atlas, consists of small paintings with a visualisation of numerical data of humanity’s water footprint across nations. Each panel is presented in a square-within-a-square format, with the size of the squares rescaled to reflect the volume of fresh water consumed per capita per day. I am the River, the River is Me, on the other hand, comprises eight paintings, framed prints, poetry, and found objects that represent rivers from around the world at critical stages of drying and degradation. The title draws from a Maori phrase that personifies rivers as living beings and the belief that their wellbeing is directly tied to our own.
Kallat is scheduled to open a survey solo at the Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai later this month. Her work is also included in the 15th Bienal de la Habana and the south-up version of Woven Chronicle being shown in an exhibition at the Musée de L’Homme in Paris. There is no danger of her river of inspiration drying up.