Issues About Ecology, Environment Essential to Art: Ravi Agarwal

KOCHI:
Artists have an important role in creating awareness about the destructive relationship between humans and nature that is triggering ecological disasters and can even lead to civilisational loss if not immediately rectified, says Ravi Agarwal, a photographer, artist and environmentalist who is exhibiting his work in the ongoing Kochi-Muziris Biennale here.
Delivering a talk on ‘art activism and ecological crisis’, the New Delhi-based artist stressed on the role artists can assume to break the existing paradigm of art and engage more with issues related to the ecology and environment.
“It is no longer enough to just switch off the fan, to compost your own garbage and other such things. There is a role of the art and the artist which has to be more than notional,” he said.
The artist’s engagement with a small fishing community off the coast of Puducherry resulted in a video work and an installation that are being shown at the Biennale.
Through a combination of photography, videos and texts from the classical Tamil Sangam literature, spanning 300 BC to 300 AD, Agarwal poses questions about ecology and society, nature and urbanity, preservation and toxicity.
“I befriended a fisherman in Puducherry who earns his livelihood by rowing into the sea and collecting fish in a plastic bag before returning home. Compared to big motorised trawlers, which can go at great speeds and cover 20 to 50 km in a day and collect 100 times more fish, the traditional fisherman has to eke out a livelihood within a span of two kilometers,” he pointed out.
The artist said going on a fishing trip with the traditional fisherman changed his whole idea of vulnerability.
One part of the video, based on text from Agarwal’s personal diary, embodies the fisherman’s daily dependence on the sea versus the artisanal fishing and highlights the fragility of the earlier that is currently being threatened ecologically.
Agarwal also referred to ability of the a
rtists to effectively depict on the dangers posed if humans took the future for granted. He referred to Amitav Ghosh’s book ‘The Great Climate Derangement’ which shows the dangers of inaction on climate change.
“Artists’ community is a free community. I believe that art has to locate itself in contemporary times. Artists have a role which is very powerful. Sometimes we don’t recognise our own power,” he added.
The artist’s work has been shown internationally, including at Documenta XI and the Sharjah Biennial in 2013.