This is a self-initiated project that I did from October 2021 - December 2021, where I made a series of paintings by using appropriate materials to the stories that I wanted to tell. I deeply investigate and relate with the visual culture I grew up with to the current challenges that are a result of historical, political and cultural courses of action.

Sapiens 

This piece is inspired by the painting, The garden of earthly delights by Hieronymous Bosch. The original 3 slide painting depicts paradise, the period when humans take nature for granted, and hell. This painting heavily resonated with the current situation of the world that we live in. 

In this digital illustration, I tried to depict three major events in the history of humankind. Cognitive revolution where the man started to communicate. Agricultural revolution when the man became a good storyteller which helped unite many fellow humans through his stories and began to exploit natural resources, and scientific revolution that has given birth to a culture that promotes avarice and excess as the good life, which is a railroad to hell.

Ocean Acidification 

As a chemical engineering graduate, I came across numerous industrial applications where the effluent is not properly treated. Ocean acidification is one of the main concerns due to untreated gases and liquids and this leads to bleaching of corals. I used etching as the appropriate medium to illustrate this as it uses acid. After the copper plate has been etched, I traced the impression of the etching to give a dead and dark effect with the etching ink on 14 X 9.5” paper.

Nature vs Humans 

An important lesson that I learned in my undergraduate is that nature spends energy optimally. Ants releasing chemicals on their way to find the shortest path for food, division of branches in a tree so that the nutrients are distributed in the most efficient way possible are a couple of examples. 

Using p5js programming language, the algorithm on the right, finds the shortest path from a starting point (top left) to the end point (bottom right) in a canvas of randomly generated obstacles (black dots). The algorithm searches for all the possible paths and chooses the shortest and the most optimized path in an undistracted manner. With this, I attempt to explain that nature moves on its own journey to find an optimum and energy affordable path wisely amidst all the distractions. In contrast, to the left, the algorithm is designed to get distracted by the black dots in an attempt to portray humans getting distracted by the riches and cravings in life. As a result, they are never content, unlike other species. 

Writing a set of code seemed like the perfect medium to use, as nature also has a set of undisputable code and commands.

The most intelligent animal 

This page from a comic that is in progress, is the result of further exploration on the idea that was discussed in the last piece. A distressed man in a park can be seen observing animals around him, he questions the reason for his constant agony despite being the most intelligent creature to ever exist on the planet.

Vantage Point 

This anamorphic piece depicts a man slowly ceasing to exist and turn into skeleton as flames of man-made stories of religion, money, consumerism engulf him. With this, I intend to tell that one should learn and see the world from a vantage point to realize that the events of concern are distorted and misshaped. 

It is our responsibility to learn to look the right way so that we can concentrate our energy and focus onto the objective, real concerns rather than the problems that emerge out of inter-subjective beliefs. I used charcoal to depict this 22 X 13” illustration and projected it onto a steel cylinder of radius 4 inches.

Waiting for food  

A cement cylinder is used as a dustbin in almost every city, town, and village of India. This scene of plastic bags and waste scattered around the dustbin is extremely common. This mural art depicts turtles looking at all the plastics they are going to soon eat.