There is a bird called the yellow-breasted bunting. It is caught in cages and eaten. Kalyani Pramod could have shown you exactly that — the cage, the suffering, the gruesomeness of it. She chose not to. Instead, she made it from appliqué and tie-dye, mounted on a found grill from the kabadiwala, beautiful and quiet and harder to look away from because of it.
That is the logic of The Last Glimpse, Kalyani’s new solo exhibition in the city. It explores the alarming decline of biodiversity and the fragile relationship between humanity and the natural world. It shows how with every passing day, human activity propels these creatures closer to the brink. As per data, species are disappearing 1,000 to 10,000 times faster, largely as a result of human activity.
The exhibition began with climate change. Kalyani’s previous show, Bhumi, took her deep into coral research, and from there into the chain reactions of species loss —how the death of a coral reef ripples into the loss of fish, into the loss of entire systems. She couldn’t stop there. And so The Last Glimpse was born.
Every material in the show is repurposed. Construction site tin sheets and kattakambi, copper wire (crocheted for a red panda in a burning forest), electrical wire (for the Great Indian Bustard caught in power lines), fishing net (for a hawksbill turtle), newspaper (spun and crocheted), beads pulled from export-rejected cushion covers, old flex hoardings used as canvas. Employing techniques including crochet, weaving, embroidery, punch needle, and other mixed media practices, each piece captures a defining moment in the decline of a species while highlighting issues such as habitat destruction, climate change, illegal wildlife trade, overexploitation, and the loss of biodiversity.
“I am trying to create beauty and with beauty, show how much of a beast we are,” says Kalyani.
Each of the 73 works is accompanied by a panel: species information, the threats it faces, a description of the materials used and what they represent, and a poem written in the species’ voice.
What Kalyani wants visitors to leave with is something more complex than awareness. “I want them to empathise with nature and how it concerns us also,” she says. “Number two, be a little selfless and not so selfish. And I want them to question every action of theirs, how it is affecting not just the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom—the entire ecosystem.”
The accompanying programme —film screenings of Turtle Walker, conversations between wildlife photographers and cinematographers, three hands-on workshops—keeps the exhibition alive outside the gallery walls.
The artworks are for sale, modestly priced, each going home with the panel and poem. The idea is that the conversation doesn’t end when you leave.
Open to all. From July 18 to 31. 10 am to 7 pm. At Alliance Française of Madras, Nungambakkam.
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