Garima Gupta, a researcher and artist based in New Delhi, India documents micro-stories and events considered tenuous in ecological wars. In bringing these flotsams of ecological wreckage, her work invites us to witness as this refuse transforms into molecules of loss, migration, wants, imaginations, obsessions, frivolity and attachment - beckoning a change with and within, for a radically robust future of our ecosphere. Her fieldwork confides in drawing, film making and writing as a petition for documenting fringe narratives and critical auditing of archives - speculating, fabulating - that which is not uttered and seldom imagined. Drawing from the fragments of turmoil that she carefully gathers in these highly vulnerable and fragile ecosystems, she works slowly and carefully by layering these elements in her practice.
Her works Minutes of the Meeting and Filed Under: a/muse/um map scenes of erasure and subjugation of the non-human against a backdrop of colonialism, commodification and culture. Here she uses video, animation and drawing to deliberate on the complex nature of our relationship with the wild. Following her research at Harvard herbaria in 2023, she is building an archival artistic project in the trans-Himalayan belt - documenting the local medicinal knowledge systems, healing plants and the foraging practices.
Shift Residency:
Garima Gupta worked with two ideas at the Shift residency. The first, a formulated thought, aligned with her ongoing research of the molecular construction of medicinal plants from the trans-Himalayan region. Her vision to convert these into floating mobiles was inspired by a silk door hanging she had seen in Ladakh. At the residency she focused on a single composition of the molecules which include elements such as nitrogen and hydrogen. She worked with the factory craftsmen and dyers to carefully create colours and layers of repeated elements that formed patterns of these molecules. Once back in her studio, Gupta aims to further work with these repeated motifs to craft them into sculptural forms. An ideation that was spurred by her interest in medicinal plants grew from a residency site visit to the Rayana Lake region. The local hospital has reforested the lake area with medicinal plants. Gupta illustrated some of the plant variants to design a canopy in hospital courtyard. Gupta’s work highlights knowledge that sits at the cusp of being lost with oral traditions, local beliefs and deforestation. Through her work there is awareness of her research and in some way also a very important preservation.
Outcome Proposals
1. Edugraphic Canopy at Anjali Hospital, Ranasan
Site Specific
Anjali Hospital is a local NGO that has spearheaded lake expansion and a-forestation exercise at Rayana belt, a former wasteland. Gupta’s canopy proposal to be installed in the community area features intra generational knowledge of regional medicinal plant properties which are soon getting lost.
180” X 180”
Print on cotton greige
2. Untitled
Sculpture (Edition of 5)
Molecular structures reimagined in a sculptural form. These elements found in various medicinal plants reflect Gupta’s research in the trans-himalyan region.
Print on viscose, Acrylic
Size x Size
