Kulpreet Singh’s ‘Extinction Archive’ at India Art Fair

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Coloured drawings of over 900 threatened animal, fungal, and plant species painted on pesticide-dipped rice paper is artist Kulpreet Singh`s attempt at posing the question: “With the speed we are moving, where will we reach?”

The square panels, with ash from stubble burning sandwiched between rice paper and laser dots reflecting the uncountable deaths across species, including human, form Singh`s latest project, “Extinction Archive”, at the ongoing 17th India Art Fair here.

“When we think about it, it`s just a word: extinction. But these are memories that are not present any more. We are not just archiving species that have gone extinct but it`s an archive of how we are continuing to ruin things for everyone,” Singh told PTI.

The work, commissioned and presented by the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, serves as a memorial to ecological and social violence, offering a contemplative visual archive of the declining environment.

Singh`s project is formed by a semi-circular wall of nearly a thousand square panels. As one stands inside it, the extinction of the projected species seems imminent, the shots of pollution-causing events, including farm fires, garbage in the Yamuna river, and the garbage mountains of Delhi, paint the picture of a dark future.

“I am archiving how the environment has been transformed. You see there is no clean air in the whole of Delhi, in India and even in the whole world. How carbon pollution is increasing in the whole world, people are suffering from diseases. By showing these elements of the environment that are extinct now I hope that maybe someone will see this and feel that one day we will also become extinct,” the Patiala-based artist said.

The 40-year-old asserts that the elements of nature, the land, rivers, and wildlife, are slowly slipping out of the collective consciousness.
“There are so many things that exist only in imagination now. Some animal or bird that we saw as a child can only be found in imagination now. When we talk about a clean environment, we enter some imagined scenarios,” he said.

Several extinct and endangered species, drawn from the Red List of Threatened Species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, find themselves on Singh`s panels, including the Mauritian giant skink, the land snail carelia mirabilis, the white blotched shrub frog, the angled flat top snail, and the harvestman species Hirstienus nanus.

The plight of farmers and issues relating to agriculture remain a conscious part of Singh`s practice.

An earlier work by the visual artist, titled “Indelible Black Marks”, at the ongoing Kochi-Muziris Biennale questioned the politics around stubble burning when many pollutant-inducing human activities like industries, traffic and wars remained undeterred.

“This work is connected with farmers. I am using stubble ash, rice paper, shots of farm fires, and the use of pesticides. I want to bring in the farmers who have killed themselves, I want to make them a part of this work. The way we have ruined the environment, it`s the farmer who is facing the brunt of it,” Singh said.

“This is about the farmer. In some way or the other, what`s inside me is going to come out.”

Each panel is marked by “an uncountable number” of holes made by laser, large and small, representing in their collectiveness all the deaths across species due to different manmade crises.

“You hear about millions of people dying every year because of climate change, pollution, food poisoning and so on, these dots are those deaths. You cannot count them,” he said.

The reality of life is to convert into ash and return to the earth.

“It is about that. The ash residue is what we are leaving behind for the generations to come,” Singh added.

The work is ongoing as the artist plans on adding more species that are on the verge of extinction.

“Everyday I am finding more about species that have gone extinct or are endangered, I am going to keep adding them to this project,” he said.

India Art Fair, running at the NSIC Exhibition Grounds in Okhla, will come to a close on February 8.

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