Sandscapes (2022)

The largest inhabited river-island of the world, Majuli, faces threats of extinction as the Brahmaputra plain of Assam (India) is one of Earth’s most flood-prone regions. The island has lost almost half its land to the river in the last forty years. Vanishing islands like Majuli need to be remembered at this critical juncture of climate change – not as objects of nostalgia but as the work of a violence that is difficult to humanly comprehend, as the effects of an aqueous action that leaves no substrate, but only temporary traces. The shapes and forms in the sand bars of Majuli keep morphing over a matter of hours to days, much like how the island has changed its shape over centuries. These micro-landscapes represent the millennial and elemental nature of the region, which has remained ancient even while hurtling towards extinction. In a troubled yet peaceful parable of antique coexistence, nature has been driving us through an evolutionary permutation for ages, but the novelty of its fury is in some ways the effect of our own more recent inclinations.