Nabanita Saha

Artist Statement

My tryst with the environment dates back more than a decade when I was travelling after studies across India. Last decade there is exponential growth in India resulting in the degradation of natural resources and rapid changes in climatic conditions. I remember growing up looking at the starry nights, which nowadays is a rare sight in any of the cities. The present generation cannot make with the same of the stars as they have not seen them in real life. To me, this is not what we really wished for.
Presently I am based in Heidelberg Germany and my previous works were inspired during my stay in Navi Mumbai, India and this city has been my muse and a prime source of creativity. I have visited Navi Mumbai in past and have seen the distinct villages growing into urban townships. Whereon on one side the development has created human and urban development, on the other side created disbalance in ecology. I have been disturbed by the disbalance as this is not sustainable for our future generation. I am working on this subject in past several years and my previous project on “Changing Landscapes of Navi Mumbai – Agri & Koli heartland” have given me a prestigious grant from ‘Pollock – Krasner Foundation’ in USA and sponsored my project. In this series my next project I have taken the subject of “Changing topology of Navi Mumbai”.
The idea was conceived while I was returning to Mumbai on a flight and observe the ground topology of Navi Mumbai before the flight lands at Mumbai in the night. The land looks like a starry night in the sky. I observed that every flight I took the lights seems to expand as the city expands. I also observed the effect of land and air pollution which makes the visibility poor for us to see stars when we are at ground. Hence, I choose to name my works as “Inverted Firmament”.
Pollution is a subsidiary of development and is the real cause of stars getting lost from our vision. However, with lo much of energy being spend on lighting of our life in the cities now the paradox of life is the stars have come down to earth. But then the question arises at what cost. Are we all be a moot spectator to these irreversible changes and destroy our habitat or can’t we live a sustainable life. These questions are shocking me…
I am in the state of shock and terrified on the way we are progressing. We are getting entangles in our own web creating a hallucination of existence knowing that our future is in perilous condition but still shutting our mind and procrastinating for future to handle. We blame authorities, state, industries for casing this problem, but never takes a step on ourselves to start the change.
As we are progressing and cities are being developed, slowly in the sky in nights have changed. Now only few stars are visible due to pollution and as the cities being developed the lights in the cities are getting intense and being visible from sky. Hence, a reverse phenomenon being observed as the Citi lights getting prominence over stars in the sky.