The Alternative Road Map

A 6-feet-long wooden boat projected with images of Odisha's cultural diversity, an accordion-shaped book narrating tales of one of the oldest women members of Chipko movement, photographs documenting the changing habitat of Jakkur Lake in Bangalore, a radio station that talks about benefits of traditional medicinal plants – these are some of the works that will be shown at Khoj Studio's upcoming show titled 'Evidence Room': A retrospective of 'Negotiating Routes', a group show of multi-media projects highlighting an alternate road map for sustainable development through art, music, video and text.

The artists whose work is being displayed include Aastha Chauhan, Asim Waqif, Vaibhav Dimri, Frame Works, Jyotiranjan Jena; Namrata Mehta, Alex White-Mazzarella, Soaib Grewal among many others.

These works reference a selection of projects from Khoj's ongoing engagement with ecology and sustainable development. Since 2010 to 2014,

Khoj has selected and given grants to artists for fourteen such projects under their public art initiative 'Negotiating Routes', to live and work with

fishermen, villagers, farmers etc and create an alternate road map where artists and communities come together and are involved in discussions

on the regeneration of the local ecology of the cities of villages that they inhabit. These projects spanned semi-urban and rural areas as diverse

as Chamba in Uttarakhand, Chungthang in Sikkim and Wadhwana Wetlands to Jakkur Lake in Bangalore, Chilika Lake in Odisha and Najibabad in Uttar Pradesh.

Mario D'Souza, Curator, Khoj Studios said, "Khoj has selected 12 of these projects and the artists were asked to recreate their work which could be shown easily on site at the Khoj premises. Through photographs, videos, sculptural work and textual documentation, visitors will get to see the alternative road map for sustainable development in our country."

For instance, in 2010, Amit Mahanti and Ruchika Negi of Frame Works collective chose to travel to Chungthang and Dzongu region to study the changing ecology of the mountain state due to dams. Sunandita Mehrotra lived and worked with one of the oldest women members of the Chipko Movemnet in Tehri Garhwal region. For the show, Sunandita has created a 12-page graphic comic book, in the shape of an accordion, narrating some of these tales.

Jyotiranjan Jena, a visual artist from Odisha, is interested in the natural ecology of Chilika Lake. At Khoj, he is creating a prototype of a wooden

boat projecting a dying art form called Ravan Chaya by using shadows and images about the bio-diversity of the lake and Odisha. Similarly, Namrata Mehta, Alex White-Mazzarella and Soaib Grewal have created three wall size prints of an akhara in Tigra village, Gurgaon, through which they tend to bring to notice the disappearing culture and tradition.

Priya Ravish Mehra is a textile artist who visited Najibabad, an unheard shawl repair centre, in Uttar Pradesh in 2012 to document the rafoogars of the area. It is a traditional skill of darning and their project aims to highlight this by engaging the community in process of creating contemporary works.

At Khoj, she will be showing a huge installation of colouful textile patches done using rafoogari. Shilpa Joglekar's project was done in Khopoli and Panvel in Maharashtra where she worked with government school children who shared with her the stories and songs they had grown up with. Shweta Bhattad and Aditi Bhattad worked in Paradsinga and at Khoj small replicas of the same will be available. Sanyukta Sharma's project done in Bungalow ki Kandi village in Mussoorie. Surekha's project is about the Jakkur Lake – another water body under threat due to unbridled development – which she has been documenting for 12 years and some of these photographs will be displayed at Khoj. Varsha Nair displays maps drawn by children of Wadhwanas documenting lifestyle changes in this area, while Astha Chauhan's project in Chamba that sought to talk about the importance of traditional medicinal plants will be recreated through a live radio station, quirky advertisements and samples of seeds from the region.