“New Natures: A Terrible Beauty is Born”
Prabhakar Pachpute’s A Fight over the Mounds, 2021, captures a trio of surrealistic mining landscapes in acrylic and gesso on canvas. One shows a thin moat surrounding a large rock that seems to have sprouted an ear. In another, a mountain appears to erupt, like a volcano, while in the third, a hybrid of a hawk and a surveillance camera surveys the husks of two dead trees. The paintings currently drape the facade of the Goethe Institute like banners, setting the tone for “New Natures: A Terrible Beauty is Born.” Curated by Ravi Agarwal, the group exhibition turns to speculative modes of imagining resistance against the looming climate catastrophe in South Asia, which has been exacerbated by processes of colonization and extraction and by the accelerated industrialization and technological progress demanded by capitalism.
Himali Singh Soin’s ongoing project Static Range, 2020–, includes an animation of a postage stamp depicting the Himalayan peak Nanda Devi—named for the goddess of happiness—as it slowly changes hues to suggest exposure to radiation. The gesture refers to a 1965 incident when the CIA and Indian Intelligence endeavored to position a fissile-powered device on the sacred mountain, only to irretrievably lose it in a sudden, terrible storm.
Other artists directly address state-sanctioned violence toward the Indigenous population and the forests in South Asia. Karan Shrestha’s suite of digital composites We Exist, 2018, visualize the intense connection to the land forged by a generation of Indigenous children, abandoned first by their fathers—often army personnel—and subsequently by the state, which does will not grant citizenship without an acknowledgement of paternity. Ishan Tankha’s body of photographs A Peal of Spring Thunders, 2007–16, documents decades of bloody struggle between Maoist rebels and the mineral-greedy state in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh. Amplifying these voices, the exhibition foregrounds history as it is told by the common people, challenging the majoritarian narratives perpetuated by the nation-state.
