Mary Wants to Read a Book

Navjot Altaf is known for her sustained engagement with interactive and collaborative art practices. Since 1997, she has been working with indigenous artists and community members of Bastar in Chhattisgarh, Central India on Nalpar (hand pump sites) and Pilla Gudi / Temples for children projects that seek to situate artistic production within the fabric of community life. An early encounter with Marxism leading to her interest in feminism has been instrumental in shaping Altaf’s sensibilities as an artist.

Mary Wants to Read a Book (2014) is a built-up space in the form of a library containing more than 2,000 books made from recycled paper, each with a text drawn from Altaf’s research. The installation recognises the significance of Kerala’s literacy movement and library culture– widely considered as key ingredients in the success of the ‘Kerala Model of Development’– marked by high social indicators and political participation despite comparatively low levels of industrialisation and per capita income. It is also the three-dimensional model of a recent scientific chart that documents 2000 years of continental temperature change, including its alarming rise in the recent decades. According to Altaf, the work is thus to be viewed from an ecological perspective, and is a critique of growing hyper production and consumption which has led to our civilisation’s estrangement from ‘life-world experiences’, resulting in a climatic catastrophe.

By cross-referencing the chronicle of an impending ecological disaster with an idealised version of social progress within the largely unindustrialised state of Kerala, the artist here suggests an alternative, less ecologically punishing mode of development.

The books can be taken away by viewers in the last two weeks of the biennale.