‘Critical Membrane’ is an ongoing interdisciplinary project by Sonia Mehra Chawla, with a focus on the present and future of India’s endangered coastal and mangrove ecosystems. Critical Membrane is an exploration of the entangled ecologies of humans, microbes, and plant life, revealing our co-dependence and co-production of these forests. Spanning prints, photographs, films, and trans-media installations, this body of work addresses itself to the coastal ecology of India’s Coromandel coast.

The artist brings together a variety of impulses, ranging from explorations of microcosmic worlds and microbial cultures to documentary cinematic studies of marginalized groups whose eco-sensitive livelihoods have declined as a result of the degradation in their environment. How do you give form to formless and shapeless warnings and threats whose fatal ramifications are disseminated across space and time? Slow violence is often ‘out of sight’, but it is important to consider perhaps this question, ‘out of sight to whom’?

The various workings of slow violence derive largely from unequal structures of power. Thus, it is imperative to seriously consider the knowledge claims and nature of resistance offered by communities who inhabit these spaces, and who are at the frontlines of change.

This project is a result of a long-term association and collaboration with the Chennai-based M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), where she studied the long-term impacts of anthropogenic activities and climate change on the wetland ecosystems and mangrove forests of Pichavaram and Muthupet in Tamil Nadu.