Part 1: 14 May - 13 June 2026
Titled by a love song to a tree from the opera Serse (1738) by Georg Frideric Handel and dovetailing with the 20th year of Project 88's founding by Sree Goswami in 2006, this curatorial project takes up the existential power of trees. Powered by a wide range of contemporary artists invited from an open call for works, the show wonders at arboreal presence and indifference, at the persistence of trees regardless of us and the influence of valuing them through the filter of our needs. This is hardly to downplay the environmental virtuosity that trees have always possessed. But cherishing trees chiefly as instruments of our survival circumvents their essential qualities: their tree-ishness, a phrase borrowed from the enthusiastic scientific research of tree scientist Harriet Rix. This existential process—achieved by evolutionary twists and hazards—has been shaping earth uniquely and phenomenally and, by that turn, its beauty and stupefying variety. Even our admiration for trees is a learned ability. Their forms have cultivated in us an aesthetic sense, a feel for beauty that attunes us to their extraordinariness as entities in themselves. Enjoying them inclines us to cherish them, a fecund yet neglected loop that emboldens Rix to revisit the deceptively obvious: "The greatest wisdom is understanding that appreciation and conservation are two sides of the same coin." That trees by what they inherently are act upon and enlighten us—magnets of material, movement, and mind.
Part 2: 18 June - 18 July 2026
And the love song to trees keeps on with Part 2 of Never was a shade. This cycle bridges the speculative and the sublime, with detours through Dol ka badh, the Sundarbans, down Mula River, taking breathers in Dahisar, Vadodara, the outskirts of Kathmandu, into Hypnagogia, and beyond. What trees truly are, who can really say. But the errors and pleasures of our relations with them speak in languages various and verdant. In works on paper, board, cloth, and aluminium and others in acrylic, of dung, and by drone, this half continues to wander with a sense of wonder at arboreal presence and indifference, at the persistence of trees regardless of us.
Part 2 Artists
Anarya
I started observing and drawing Vilayti Kikar on my walks to Sanjay Van, a small forest area connected to the Aravali’s in the midst of dense Delhi chaos. Despite it being characterised as a super villain and a foreign invasive species, I always stand in awe of its tactileness and form. Listening and reading about invasive species has been a strange experience, where one starts seeing a being as something that ought to be removed and destroyed. Emergence of a new mix of ecosystems is inevitable due to human activities. But it is interesting for me how a species is imagined as a “villain” or as “useful”. The binary approach is also rooted in colonial ecological understanding of natural elements competing with each other, rather than collaborating and working together. These drawings are the result of observing, spending time with, slowly drawing and being completely mesmerised by the scapes that Vilayti kikar creates.
Debasis Beura
When I enter a jungle, everytime I feel a living being talking to me. I can listen to them. I can smell their sweat. I enjoy the light within, it feels like a theatre. When I look closer at the colours, the textures, the forms, designs and arrangements, it feels like something fascinating. When trees are cut down, many species or flora and fauna vanish and the river of blood flows from it. It soaks the entire land like a post flood scenario and the grass field turns in a direction. Deforestation raises the temperature, lowers the oxygen level, creates water crisis hence, at the end only the skeleton and the blood soil is leftover. Therefore, destroying a tree means we destroy the womb.The red line defines the blood, the flesh and the pain. Again the number of erected stamens or flowers shows the reproductive character of nature. As a whole, my work talks about the sublime beauty of the entire process of birth and destruction, rather focusing on positive and negative aspects.
Subhankar Chakraborty
This body of work explores landscapes in transition, focusing on an abandoned terrain that has been gradually occupied and transformed by builders into constructed space. Using materials such as threads, bricks, and wooden blocks, I map this shift, visually tracing the movement from open land to architectural form while echoing the processes of planning and construction. Rooted in my experiences in Goalpara, near the banks of the Kopai River, where cultivated land has been replaced by buildings and brick kilns, the work reflects on memory, change, and adaptation. The arrangement of bricks often resembles emerging architecture, becoming a metaphor for rapid transformation. At the same time, the works observe the ecological impact of these changes, where insects, birds, and other life forms lose their habitats, disrupting the local ecosystem. By juxtaposing the evolving visual language of landscape with the logic of urban development, the series reflects on the complex relationship between human intervention, biodiversity, and the quiet, shifting atmosphere of different seasons.
Janaki Gandhi
As a volunteer conservationist in the Jeevitnadi & Chipko movement in Pune I spent a lot of time tree mapping and geotagging the trees around the Riparian zone along the Mula river. The more time I spent learning about them the more I felt the need to give them a voice, an identity far removed from the ecological and environmental reasons we are taught to value about them. I felt a deep respect for the trees I sought to protect and it bothered me that they were not seen as individuals, unique with their own rights to exist beyond what they offered us. There it started out with a process of turning each tree I drew into a portrait- to draw forth and infuse the paper with that, which made them wonderful -just as they are. A story I told in the soft and bold lines of a pen to build an enigmatic and compelling picture.
Neha Luthra
Dol Ka Badh is a wild ecosystem in Jaipur on the brink of disappearance due to development. These works are part of a sustained engagement with this landscape, approached through observation, memory, and imagination.The oil painting Sublime Presence depicts the densest part of Dol Ka Badh and one of the first sites to be cleared. Light floods in and the trees glow, lending a quality of the sublime: an impression of wonder and a presence that extends beyond sight. In Absentia and Phantom Limb oscillate between absence and presence. Reference images dissolve into memory and imagination as forms are half-conjured and lines recede and nearly vanish. In Phantom Limb, a peepal tree with severed branches stretches across temporal registers: what has been removed still persists. Companions brings two forests in quiet relation: Dol Ka Badh in Jaipur and Kabaty in Poland, a forest the artist has known since childhood. Placed together, the trees are imagined as connected across distance. These works do not fix the forest as image or record, but render it as a shifting condition between appearance and disappearance, between memory and projection, between what remains and what is mourned.
Soumen Mondal
My works reflect the memory, survival struggles, and ecological realities of the Sundarbans delta. Using natural and river-related materials, each installation embodies the tension between fragility and resilience. An Aggressive Wind conveys the intensity of storms and cyclones, capturing the conflict between destruction and renewal. Roots of Survival employs mangrove roots and organic elements to symbolize the fight for existence amidst erosion and floods. The Narrator of Material Memory transforms everyday materials—straw, bark, grass, soil, and dung—into carriers of memory, where labor and lived experience become integral to the artwork. AGGRESSIVE DELTA 8 is part of the artist’s ongoing Aggressive Delta Series, mapping the river as both a political and ecological body. Here, natural materials are reconfigured to narrate displacement, endurance, and the interdependence of humans and environment. Together, these works create a dialogue between natural processes and human intervention. They are not static objects but living archives, where materials embody histories of survival, vulnerability, and renewal. The installations invite viewers to reflect on the precarious balance between nature and human life, situating the Sundarbans within broader ecological realities while foregrounding its fragile yet enduring presence.
Sahil Sawant
The drawings presented are part of an ongoing inquiry into how humans form relationships with ecological beings—trees, moss, grasses, and other ecological systems embedded within everyday urban life. Rather than viewing ecology as separate from habitation, the works observe how these relationships unfold through routine practices, sensorial experiences, and shared spatial conditions. Across different sites, trees emerge as extensions of domestic and social life—becoming shelters, landmarks, temporal markers, and sites of belief and faith. In C.B. Patil Chawl, ecological elements merge with everyday living, where trees act as structural supports, social anchors, and carriers of seasonal and cultural rhythms. At Vitthal Mandir, a centuries-old tree is perceived as a sentient presence, shaping collective memory, belief, and ecological continuity within a rapidly urbanizing context. In the Rainforest Street, subtle interactions such as collecting moss, reading seasonal changes through birds and aromas, or negotiating shared ownership of trees—reveal intimate, lived relationships with ecology. Through these observations, the work attempts to reframe ecological thinking as a network of reciprocal, human-scale relationships embedded in daily life.
Sashikanth Thavudoz
My practice centres on sustainability and the environment, exploring the relationship between art, ecology, and human intervention. Working across drawing, moving image, installation, and light, I engage with minimal and conceptual approaches, rethinking their forms within contemporary contexts. A key part of my process involves immersing myself in specific locations, spending time with local communities, and engaging with the histories embedded within each site. This approach informs my moving image work on a two-century-old banyan tree. The film arises from a long-standing fascination with trees as living structures that embody time, memory, and gradual transformation. My understanding deepened during a visit to Lal Bagh Botanical Garden with Suresh Jairam, where close observation encouraged a more attentive perspective. The film gradually moves across and within the tree, revealing its scale and intricate structure. Over time, the banyan emerges as an evolving ecosystem rather than a single form. Planted by Sayajirao Gaekwad III, it has witnessed generations, including the Indian Independence Movement, and stands today as a testament to resilience and continuity.
Suresh Kumar Singha
My work is drawn from surrounding nature by closely observing its ever-changing seasonal cycles. My tree forms echo Far Eastern traditions, where trees are majestic protagonists, infusing surfaces with timeless essence. The juxtaposition of pages of books with luminous almost cinematic images creates an aesthetic tension that invites the viewer to merge the raw materiality of the medium with the ethereal quality of light. The folded format adds a tactile dimension and suggests that each miniature is a secret waiting to be unfolded, revealing hidden depths- my artist’s book that holds both spontaneous gesture and refined vision. The overall arrangement transforms individual studies into a collective narrative, where every piece contributes to a larger atmospheric symphony of texture, color, intimate dialogue and introspection. Crafting books is an attempt to weave a world where viewers step in, become part of narrative, and intertwine their story with the art.
Part 1 Artists
Bansri Om Chavda
These works—Rustle, Crackle, Sway, Rend and Drizzle—emerge from listening to trees as living witnesses: aesthetic, ecological, and deeply participatory presences within life on earth. Each painting responds to sound—the friction of bark, the sway of branches, the cracking of dry wood, and the subtle reception of drizzle settling through layers of leaves and shade. Rather than illustrating trees directly, the works attempt to encounter their inherent “tree-ishness” through sonic memory, contemplation, and minimal ink gestures. The series forms part of my ongoing project ‘Subtle Connections’, where recorded and designed sound environments—including forests, seasonal transitions, and natural ruptures—are translated into visual form through ink, charcoal, and mark-making. Here, painting becomes an act of listening. The project also imagines future presentations with accompanying sound installations or audio booths, inviting viewers to build their own sensory and emotional encounters with trees, sound, and shelter.
Palvi Godambe
The works presented in this exhibition are part of an ongoing exploration of eco-printing on fabric, where natural elements such as leaves, flowers, and plant matter are directly transferred onto textile surfaces. Rather than controlling the outcome, the process allows for unpredictability—marking the fabric through heat, pressure, and time. These pieces engage with ideas of impermanence, trace, and transformation. The imprints function as both image and residue, capturing a fleeting moment
of contact between organic material and cloth. Subtle variations in tone, texture, and form emphasize the role of chance, making each work unique and unrepeatable. Situated between painting and textile, the works challenge traditional notions of authorship and control, foregrounding process as a collaborative act with nature. This body of work reflects an ongoing investigation into sustainability, material sensitivity, and the poetic potential of natural processes.
Debabrata Hazra
The three paintings on view explore the indeterminate space between nature and abstraction that has fascinated the artist for decades. These works are also the reflection of the artist’s multi-sensory experiences of vegetation and geology in his childhood days. Debabrata was born in the undivided district of Midnapore in West Bengal which had features of dry peninsular Sal forest, undulating terrain and lateritic red soil towards the western parts to the long stretches of green paddy fields, wetlands, swamps, creeks, alluvium along the rivers and sandy saline soil in the coastal belt. The works are populated by forms seemingly of trees, the wilderness, the play of light and shadow along with the drama that takes place unnoticed in nature —which encourage a range of associations with the vigour that is evident in nature. The artist is also deeply interested in the cycle of damage and repair, ever-present in nature, which explains the gestural aggressiveness in these works where forms and shapes emerge organically, often through happy accidents. He has chosen the process of painting itself as the theme of his work and aims to capture the fluidity by which the image becomes the painting and vice-versa.
Rahul Juneja
The works in the exhibition are part of an ongoing project, ‘Crackle of an Undying Log’. The project brings together ecology, mythology and technology, spanning across moving images, holograms, installations and photographs. It thinks about the kalpavriksha, a magical wish granting tree in the Indian cosmology; which only fulfils wishes of the pure hearted- situating the moral deeply in the information and ecological landscape. It opens up how we think of archives, information, extraction and morality in relation to wider systems of ecology. Epistemic Fruit is a photographic print, thinking about the forbidden fruit present in different mythological systems. Here, the consumption of fruit doesn’t grant knowledge- but reveals templates and systems which shape knowledge. Finding Kalpavriksha is a single channel video, using a depth sensor to map the ever changing shape of mythical kalpavriksha; The tree, becomes a harborer of liquid histories and archives which exist outside human linearity- morphing constantly as the sensor attempts to map it. Dangling Dews is a single channel video, compiling three anecdotes around resinous archives, a burnt mythical eye, and an undying log which keeps crackling. The work positions the tree as technology of enlightenment that spans across mythical, industrial and ecological conditions.
R. Magesh
The works have evolved as expressions of nostalgia for the absent and a silent grief for the memories of the lost. I have always been fascinated with the ever changing landscapes around me and the withering away of the ecosystem around us under the nonchalant march of time. My practice engages into depictions of cerebral spaces where the narratives of isolation and loss were built up with abandonment. I intended to portray the overwhelming nature of architecture resulting from negligence of the space which embodies the remorse that I feel from the loss of humanity and life in the whirlwind of civilization and development.
Nisha Manavi
These works are part of a series called , ‘I Dance, As I Grow’. The works present trees as powerful living beings filled with movement, strength, and emotion. The branches, trunks, and roots twist, bend, and spread across the surface as if they are dancing. These unusual forms are inspired by the natural energy of trees and their silent ability to survive through changing seasons, harsh weather, and human intervention. The twisted trunks and roots represent resilience and courage. Even when pushed, cut, or shaped by outside forces, the tree continues to grow. Instead of breaking, it adapts. The roots hold the earth firmly, showing stability and connection, while the branches move freely, expressing freedom and life. Their dancing forms create a sense of rhythm, making the trees appear alive and expressive rather than still objects in nature. Through this series, I want to highlight the boldness of trees and their quiet strength. Trees are often seen as background elements in our surroundings, but these works bring attention to their presence, endurance, and individuality. The works also reflect the relationship between nature and life itself, showing that true strength can exist in flexibility, movement, and the ability to continue growing despite difficulties.
Robin Rawat
The question of truth is a key force driving this series. The mimesis of nature is brought into question. There is no singular truth in a landscape; abstraction becomes the language to address its constructed nature. The question persists: is the landscape inherently abstract? The horizon is removed. It is not something trees ask for, and standing within a forest does not produce it. This deliberate absence disrupts conventional ways of seeing and unsettles the expectation of landscape as ordered and pleasant. Instead of offering a distant view, the work insists on immersion and proximity. The viewer is no longer positioned outside the scene but drawn into a space between trees where orientation becomes uncertain. In this sense, the horizon operates as a visual fiction. These works do not depict a literal forest but aim for evocation, where trees emerge as active presences within ecosystems that remain unfamiliar and unresolved.
Part 1
Selected artists' Biographies
Part 2
Selected artists' Biographies
