Alternate Shapes for the Earth

Alternate Shapes for the Earth (2014) is Baroda-based artist Nataraj Sharma’s way of challenging the certainties that limit our perception of the world. Conceived in the aftermath of the 2002 communal riots in the state of Gujarat, where he lives, what it also puts forth is a call for coexistence of multiple views and people – “a proposal for tolerance in an intolerant world”.

In this installation, Sharma recasts planet Earth in shapes other than the sphere, all arranged on rotatable sculpting stands, ‘Celestial Works in progress’ as he calls them. At the base of the installation, interlocked cogwheels stand as symbols of the great unity of forces that animate all things in the universe– from the smallest cells in our bodies to massive stars.

According to the artist, the installation had its origins in a drawing describing the movement of the Earth, Moon and the Sun that he drew while explaining a solar eclipse to his young daughter. A contemplation of this image led him to a vision of the same heavenly bodies as objects in a sort of “divine Karkhana (an artist’s workshop)”. He first executed the idea in the paintings Explaining the Solar Eclipse (for Katya)(1999) and Alternate Shapes for the Earth (2000), later translating the same vision into three dimensions with a sculptural installation. For Sharma, this is an ongoing project. He continues to reshape the forms that the planet takes in successive versions of the installation.