A Desert Meets a Forest: Contemporary Art from the Himalayas, Curated by Latika Gupta

A ‘sense of place’ is difficult to define; geographers, sociologists, environmentalists and psychologists have described the concept as the particular affective connection and bond between places and people. How we understand and respond to the topography, the sights, smells and sounds of a place are subjective and yet rooted in the memories, mythologies and imaginations of a place through our subjective perceptions. The idea of ‘place’ is produced via a relationship with the land, atmosphere, ecology, cultural contexts and also the evolving nature of places along borderlands which are particularly precarious and susceptible to the immediate effect of unchecked tourism, climate change; all of which have an impact on people and their everyday lives and futures.

All the artists in the exhibition have a deep connection with the Himalayas, living and working there; having made the place their home. The works in the exhibition consisting of paintings, photographs, ceramics, sculptures, videos and installations—are their responses to ‘place’ in the Himalayas—whether the cold desert high altitude region of Ladakh or the forested borderlands of Arunachal in the Eastern Himalayas. The works reflect experiments with material drawn from the land- soil, salt, flowers and processes of making that incorporate the wind, water and weather, bringing to us deeply felt explorations into local histories, belief systems and ways of living in the Himalayas.