"Residents of Kattukuppam breathe nitrogen, ammonia, and fly ash; we do not breathe oxygen anymore," lamented Subhashini.
As a homemaker living in the industrial belt of North Chennai, her story is buried among the many lived experiences hidden behind Chennai's increasingly worrying air quality index (AQI) numbers.
The air she and other residents breathe is both personal and political—shaped by power, policy, and inequality. This idea formed the heart of the art exhibition Pugai Padam ("when smog creates art"), organised by the Pugai Padam Collective in Chennai recently where her story was also featured.
The exhibition, where you had to enter via a grey carpet, featured a representation of Chennai using smog plates. Fourteen plates were arranged with a break in the middle, with an installation of the River Cooum symbolically dividing North Chennai from the rest of the city.
Smog was both the art and the artist.
Square-shaped smog plates engraved with stencil images of each location were used as a medium to collect particulate matter from the air. The darker the plate and the clearer the stencil image, the more toxic the pollution in that region.
"However, some smog plates didn't capture the complete story," said Tittu, coordinator of the Pugai Padam Collective.
Pointing to a plate placed at a fruit shop in Mylapore that collected relatively fewer pollutants, he explained, "The shop owner showed us the dust on apples and oranges. That was his story."
Similarly, Subhashini said that the plate kept in her home for a month did not fully capture the real tragedy of Ennore. The environmental damage from the 2017 Ennore oil spill and the ammonia gas leak in 2024 continues to affect the community.
The darkest smog plate was collected from the roof of a residential building in Kurivimedu, where it captured heavy fly ash from the nearby NTECL Vallur Thermal Power Plant.
Environmental experiences: The caste and gender divide
North Chennai, with its large Dalit population and high concentration of polluting industries, has been historically marginalised. With around 34 red-category industries, the city's largest garbage dump, and four ports, life here is shaped by toxic and polluted air.
"The environmental experience depends a lot on status—driven by gender, caste, and class. The North Chennai-South Chennai divide is evident on the basis of caste. Areas with a higher Dalit population have more toxic industries," said Nityanand Jayaraman, environmental activist and one of the event organisers.
Gender inequality in environmental experience is especially visible within homes. The burden of care is largely placed on women.
"When there are more sick people, the burden on women increases in areas where pollution is concentrated," he explained, adding that women often do not prioritise their own health when there are multiple sick members in the household.
Many men have died in their 40s, said Subhashini, noting that their wives have now been saddled with the added responsibility of being the breadwinners too. She also observed that women in general suffer from calcium deficiencies after prolonged exposure to toxic air. Breast cancer cases are also common here.
"Mothers know how newborn babies refuse to drink milk and choke on it. Babies are born and instantly develop coughs and are asked to undergo nebulisation," she said.
There is also a gendered dimension of pollution, according to Nityanand. A man may leave the neighbourhood for work in a less polluted area, gaining a few hours of relief. A homemaker, however, remains in the polluted environment all day, affected by toxic air 24 hours a day.
Involving ordinary people and not just the experts
One of the core ideas behind the smog plate exhibits was of art capturing fragments of human experience. It acknowledged the fact that people themselves are the experts, with their bodies understanding the effects of pollution more deeply than any external authority.
"Usually, pollution-related policy is left to experts, people with degrees. While they deserve a space in decision-making, so do ordinary people," said Nityanand Jayaraman.
He underlined that such stories rarely find a place in policymaking. Experts tend to forget that data is lifeless and that it does not convey emotion or lived reality. According to him, AQI numbers are not needed to tell someone that their area is polluted.
For a homemaker, she is the expert of her family, not a doctor. In the same way, our bodies show signs of sickness that are also indicators of air quality. Ordinary people's experiences must guide decision-making.
Recently, the Chennai Corporation announced the installation of air pollution monitors and LED display boards in 100 locations across the city at a cost of Rs 1.5 crore.
"We want people to understand the politics behind data. We don't want the government to spend more money just to generate further data," he said.
"People and residents can map pollution hotspots in the city better than anyone else. The government is turning data monitoring into a ritual exercise—substituting it for real action to reduce pollution," he added.
Chennai's AQI is often compared with Delhi's. While such comparisons may help policymakers, Nityanand Jayaraman said they mean very little to residents.
"We don’t breathe average air," he explained.
"People do not take comfort in knowing that Chennai's air is less polluted than Delhi's. What is unhealthy is unhealthy. We are not looking for comparisons—we are asking for healthy air. That is our right, and the government must guarantee it. Our bodies do not wait for the pollution index to reach its worst to begin suffering," he added.
Art can affect you
Art about pollution creates a human response that data cannot. When the goal is to convey pain and emotion, art speaks more powerfully than numbers.
The installations by the Pugai Padam Collective were inspired by Kim Abeles, an artist from Los Angeles who created smog plate artworks in the 1980s.
“When I first came to LA from the countryside, I tried to complain to people about the pollution. Sadly, the condition was normalised there," Abeles said.
She made smog plates with stencil images of the US Presidents and left them outdoors for pollutants to settle.
"I left the plates out longer for Presidents who were environmentally insensitive—40 days if it was bad, like during Ronald Reagan's time," she explained. She used smog plates to sensitise people about the environmental conditions in LA.
'If the river can fight, so can I'
Power plants in Ennore and oil refineries in Manali are operating in violation of emission norms, discharging pollutants far beyond legally permitted limits.
"Even if they were operating within legal norms, the pollution load would still be unbearable because of the disproportionately dense concentration of toxic industries in one small area, targeting a highly dense working-class population," Nityanand said.
"We have demonstrated this using the government’s own data, yet no action has been taken," he added.
Despite this, he emphasised the need to remain hopeful and continue fighting for the environment.
"A friend of mine recently got Rs 20,000 worth of prawns from the Ennore River—a river we had all declared dead. If the river is fighting, then I have to fight too," he concluded.