Timeline of Backwash-I
Materials: Wood collected from Industrial scrap yards, floor paint, silkscreen printing. Year: 2015-20
Timeline of Backwash -II
We built the modern world with non-renewable resources of the earth in a short time of history. if the development models of the modern world could have been ecologically balanced or more sustainable, we could have avoided the extreme climate disasters in recent times. The vast water crisis, floods in India and elsewhere, massive forest fires in Australia, Amazon forests, superstorms across the globe are among the disasters one could relate directly to the global climate crisis. With the background of global climate scenario, these two artworks Timeline of Backwash I and Timeline of Backwash II, mostly focuses on the local ecological importance, which is the Western Ghats of India. The material used to build this work is repurposed from the industrial scrap yard demonstrates its brutal use and its journey from across the globe as merely called as crate wood.
The Western Ghats is one of the ten hottest biodiversity hotspots on earth and has great importance for water security for the entire region in many ways. It influences the monsoon patterns, and many rivers flow from the Ghats to plains. Over the last few decades, this remarkable site has been witnessing rampant, and disturbing developmental activities, like hydropower projects, minings, monoculture etc. As a result, the Ghats are shrinking with devastating effects on local ecology and life.
Images from the 350-year-old pictorial volumes ‘Hortus Malabaricus’ or Garden of Malabar play a reminder role in the background on the surface of wooden structures. The wooden structures reduced in geometrical shapes render the modernist outlook and the bold graphics in grey are the reminiscence of our developmental aspiration of the present.
Arunkumar H G 