Ravi Agarwal. Ecologies of Loss

Indian artist Ravi Agarwal on show at PAV Turin

Nowadays, photography is a kind of visual note. It has become – within the last decades of digital and “social” (r)evolution – a written track composed by icons. Taking pictures of something in order to keep it in mind is a common practice, that is functional on the one hand, but on the other it empties photography of its past. Ravi Agarwal‘s latest exhibition at PAV – Parco Arte Vivente in Turin (Italy), curated by Marco Scotini, is a journey of rediscovering the embedded report of photography’s political function. The artist, based in New Delhi,  works as curator and writer, and his practice blurs the borders between activism and art. Ravi Agarwal works to unearth the complexity of humanity’s ecological and economic imagination. He deploys connections between Europe and India, while comparing the implementation and impact of industrial methods. This very first Italian solo exhibition of the Indian artist continues the investigation into the relationship between artistic practices and ecological thought in Asia, that was started by the Italian curator Scotini with a solo exhibition of Chinese artist Zheng Bo.

Ravi Agarwal, Alien Waters, 2004-2006. Photographic print series, Hahnemühle paper on dibond, various dimensions. Courtesy the artist.

A large part of Agarwal’s work deals with water. Such productions (photographic and video) are complex cartographies of the actual condition of the hydric sources in the Indian subcontinent. The marginality of rivers (cities don’t need them anymore) and the way they suffer (they are dirty, filthy, almost dead) are just two things around which the series Alien Waters (2004-2006) revolves. The photographic series seeks to investigate the factual and metaphorical effects that arise from new forms of alienation. The river is drawn as a muse and metaphor for a search into the current anthropogenic condition. The alienation of water from water is a consequence of it being a mechanistic part of society. In this perspective, water lost its “ability” to determine its own life and destiny. Basically, if water has been deprived of its factual and metaphorical function, these photographs document – without strictly documenting – such process of alienation.

Ravi Agarwal, Have you seen the flowers on the river?, 2007-2011. Series of 7 photographic prints, Hahnemühle paper on dibond, 24 x 36 cm. Video, 3’ 33’’. Installation. Courtesy the artist.

The project Have you seen the flowers on the river? (2007-2011) is simultaneously a poem and a documentary – an artist’s diary of a journey along the river Yamuna. The Yamuna river stretches 1,375km across the north of the country. At its source on the Himalayas, its water is crystal clear; but the Yamuna is famous for being India’s most polluted river. Ravi Agarwal underlines how the local economy of flower fields is based on the fertility of the riverbank – a land that nowadays is much in demand, due to a fast urban expansion imbibed with a global desire. A journey that recalls an entire lifecycle: Agarwal follows the flowers along the river to the city (New Delhi) where they find their final destination in commemorating those who passed away.

Ravi Agarwal, Engines – 20 km, 2015. Series of 20 photographic prints, Hahnemühle paper on dibond, 38 x 57 cm, from the series Else All Will Be Still, 2013-2015. Courtesy the artist and Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai, India.

The photographs produced by Ravi Agarwal have circulated in the art world but weren’t meant to attract interest only in that field. Agarwal aims to have an effect on the real world, and he uses art as a tactical tool. Martha Rosler, speaking of Chauncey Hare and Fred Lonidier, said that their practice in documentary photography could be located under the domain of “a culture of opposition”. Pallavi Paul – in his essay “The Work of Freedom in a World of Images” – argues the same for the work of Ravi Agarwal. As a matter of fact, since the Indian artist has always worked in between art and activism, his works have contributed to creating political and ecological awareness, showing a renewed and radical mode of conceiving the world – something that creates connections, and wishes to create the possibility for a new form of living.

Ravi Agarwal: Ecologies of Loss is at PAV – Parco Arte Vivente in Turin until June 9, 2019.