Photo Essay —

the voice in the grass

DYUTIMAN MUKHOPADHYAY PHOTOGRAPHY

This is a photoshoot of my student Krishna Sheth’s work which was part of a Master’s project, titled Dust Thou Art conducted by myself and Dr Srivi Kalyan at Srishti Manipal Institute of Arts Design and Technology (SMI), Manipal Academy of Higher Education in 2023.

We tried to use aesthetic embodiment and embodied metaphors as tools to specifically explore how life and soil are entwined, what we have taken from it, and what we can give back. The objective was to explore soil from an ecological, environmental, metaphorical, personal, and creative perspective. However, the idea was to try to undertake this exploration not consciously as scientists, artists, environmentalists or through other designated, preconceived labels but as embodied ‘experiencers’. The students cultivated the possibilities of translating this experience as an output using soil as a creative medium of exploration using the experience of both embodiment and disembodiment. They embarked on a contemplative research exercise to ‘feel’ the importance of soil in the dynamic ecological framework. Through this contemplative research practice, along with using primary and secondary research data, and through their artistic processes they investigated how soil can be interpreted as a metaphor for life, death, self, creativity, and belonging. They juxtaposed these concepts with the broader themes of soil as a part of disintegration, worthlessness, valuelessness, waste, ruin, and toxicity. The idea was to use embodied metaphors to describe how literal and abstract meanings become intertwined, such that abstract concepts are metaphorically grounded in sensorimotor experiences of their body, which can be projected through their art.

This work is a part of my research focus at the Centre for Reimagining Transitions at SMI, which focuses on the transition in knowledge systems and proposes a paradigm shift in the currently valid Western “scientific” inquiry methods. It tries to incorporate and use the principles of the Indian Philosophy of Science as was prevalent before the spread of the European Scientific Revolution and its colonial aftermath. The tools for this research are mostly ‘a-disciplinary’, universal questions that delve into the shared complexities of knowledge within the realms of arts and sciences.

Camera: Canon 60D.

January 26, 2023.

Bangalore, India.

Artist: Krishna Sheth.

Photography: Dyutiman Mukhopadhyay.