New Delhi, March 30: Beatles, bats and mosquitoes have suddenly found a place in the realm of public art in the Indian capital.
Opening up points of intersection between art, ecology, science and urban landscape is the public art residency programme, “In Context: Public.Art.Ecology” with its nervecentre in Saket and fanning out across the city.
For instance, British artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey have turned a sliver of urban space near Saket – home to three mega shopping malls in south Delhi – into a green breather.
The project, Khoj Court, uses planted barley stalks and the plant pigment chlorophyll to drive home the message that art exists in synergy with the green ecological cover.
Controlled production of the pigment, chlorophyll, serve as a colouring and chemical medium for photographs. “Our project is a breathing space in this hot and polluted city,” artist Ackroyd says.
American artist and biologist Brandon Ballengee is working with the Canada-based Ecohaven Project to create a micro habitat installation for insects at the Select City Mall.
The project is called “Econnect + Love Motel for Insects”. During the day, the native plants of Delhi offer a habitat and food source for butterflies. And at night, the surface of the Econnect lotus becomes a “motel attracting urban insects like beatles, moths and a variety of anthropods by using ultra-violet light.
“We are at a pivotal moment in human history when human habitats are impacting environment. I am trying to create works that hopefully offer solutions. If you can create micro-habitats to help animals, birds, insects and plants which are disappearing in the city and in highrises, it can cool cities, bring more rain and allow the city to function better,” Ballengee told IANS.
He has collaborated with Navin Thomas and Pratik Sagar.
The biologist and Ecohaven have implemented similar urban ecology art projects in Asia, Europe and America (north and south). He says, “Insects are one of the least understood and appreciated groups of animals in the world.” This is Ballengee’s first project in India.
Artist Pratik Sagar, a resident of the capital, is building opinion about the urban avifauna under siege through his stand-alone public art intervention, “Unpacking Social Networks”, in different locations around the capital.
“My installation creates a space where groups of people – across religion and social mores – can feed birds and create new social networks between birds and life,” Sagar told IANS.
The structure contains many bowls of cereal arranged as such to form the word – “forgiveness”. The artist, who has carried his installation to the Nehru Park, the Khoj Studio, the forested ridge area in north Delhi and to the Yamuna bank, says at the core of his work lies an appeal to “forgive and interact with nature”.
“I would like to talk about vultures and create an installation to feed meat to eagles in future,” said the artist, who likes to deconstruct objects and popular perceptions.
Bangalore-based artist Navin Thomas has been studying the impact of architecture in urban ecology for the last five years.
Thomas, who is working on a collaboration installation project for Khoj, “Ode to Dengue”, to “observe the behaviour of bats, mosquitoes and other nocturnal insects in urban shelters” experiments with the effect of ultra-violet artificial light and architecture on creatures.
The artist has also placed a large ultra-violet structure outside the Khirkee Mosque in Saket to attract hornets. The sculpture, however, is drawing thousands of resident bats from their colonies inside the mosque.
“I have also created sound installation CD – ‘Call to Prayer’ – with recordings of bat calls from their colonies in the capital,” Thomas told IANS.
The artist observes that with changes in the environment, more artists are working with the ecology.
The installations will be open to public viewing for a fortnight from April 1.
–IANS–