Medium: Multimedia Installation
Edition of 3
Dimensions: Variable
Collage (100 inches) :
Wall based print (42 × 63 in),
Archival Photographs (10 × 15, 12 x 8, 12 × 8, 12 x 8 inches),
Monitor (42.5 × 24 inches)
Year: 2024
About the artwork
‘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.
About the artist
Sonia Mehra Chawla is a multidisciplinary artist based in New Delhi. She received her BFA (2001) and MFA (2004) in Fine Arts from Delhi University’s College of Art in New Delhi. Working at the intersection of art and science, her artistic practice explores notions of ecology, sustainability and conservation through a multispecies lens.
Chawla’s recent exhibitions include, 'Silent Archive', Inverlieth House Museum, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh (2024), Alien Worlds, Wardlaw Museum, University of St Andrews, Scotland (2024), Critical Zones, a travelling exhibition in South Asia, co-produced by ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe and Goethe-Institut, Mumbai.(2022-24), ‘The Beauty of Early Life’ at ZKM, Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe (2022), ‘New Natures: A Terrible Beauty is Born’ at CSMVS Museum Mumbai in collaboration with Goethe-Institut Mumbai (2022), ‘Evolutionary Potential’, institutional solo exhibition, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart in collaboration with the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin (2022), ‘The Rooted Sea’, solo exhibition at Summerhall, part of Edinburgh Science Festival 2022, ‘Entanglements of Time & Tide’, solo exhibition, Castle Mills, Edinburgh Printmakers, in collaboration with Marine Scotland, Creative Scotland, and ASCUS (2021), (UN)Containable Life, a comprehensive solo exhibition in the UAE, spanning a decade of artistic practice, 1x1 Art Gallery, Dubai. (2021), ‘Driving the Human’ at Radialsystem, Berlin (2021), ‘Essl Collection’, Albertina Museum, Vienna (2020), ‘Fragile Kinships’, Embassy of Switzerland, New Delhi (2019), ‘The Undivided Mind’, Khoj International Artists’ Association, Delhi (2018); ‘The World In The City’, ifa-Galerie Stuttgart (2017) and Yinchuan Biennale 2016.
