Page 120 - Vogue - India (January 2020)

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ART
THE BIGPICTURE

From a millennial-pink octopus declaring the climate crisis to the

indigenous concept of jugaad playing catalyst to conscious art, sustainability

is slowly becoming a clarion call for the art world. By Somak Ghoshal

The spectre of melting ice caps haunts sage of time. Then, he left these icy in- tor of IAF. The convergence of these PHOTO: TIERNEY GEARON. STYLING: ALEX HARRINGTON. HAIR: MUSTAFAYANAZ. MAKEUP: TERESA PEMBERTON. MANICURE: YUKO TSUCHIHASHI. MODELS: LIU WEN; GUINEVERE VAN SEENUS. TAILOR: HAILEY DESJARDINS;
apocalyptic visions of climate change. stallations to melt. He called the work, names from near and far isn’t acciden-
Most of us have seen such scenes in with a tongue-in-cheek literalism, tal. All over the world, art is now being
documentaries and photographs. We Ice Watch. invoked as a tool to jolt people into fac-
shuddered or nodded in despair, yet Eliasson is one of the star attrac- ing the perils of environmental dam-
quickly moved on. Imagine being am- tions at the upcoming India Art Fair age. In October 2019, a giant pink octo- COURTESY AADITI JOSHI AND TARQ COPYRIGHT AADITI JOSHI ; GETTY IMAGES
bushed by glacial chunks of ice one fi ne (IAF), being held in Delhi from Janu- pus was trailed along Whitehall,
day on the streets of the city you live ary 30 to February 2, 2020. “We will London, by Extinction Rebellion, a
in. That’s what Danish-Icelandic artist also feature works by contemporary global people-led movement that
Olafur Eliasson did last year. He trans- Indian artists such as Ravi Agarwal, wants governments to declare a ‘cli-
ported a dozen blocks of ice, weighing Atul Bhalla and Aaditi Joshi, who have mate and ecological emergency’. The
several tonnes, from Greenland to been at the forefront of the national demonstration was meant to grab at-
London and arranged them in the conversation on climate action and so- tention, and it did. But can such inter-
shape of a clock to allude to the pas- cial change,” says Jagdip Jagpal, direc- ventions go beyond a call for action?

120 VOGUE INDIA JANUARY www.vogue.in