Pancha Mahabhuta (Five Great Elements)

The five elements are Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Sky. It is believed that all of creation, including the human body, is made up of these five essential elements and that upon death, the human body dissolves into these elements, thereby balancing the cycle of nature. These five elements are also associated with the five senses. The base element, earth, can be perceived by all five senses – hearing, touch, sight, taste and smell. The next higher element, water, has no odour but can be heard, felt and seen and tasted. Next comes fire, which can be heard, felt and seen. Air can be heard and felt. “Akash” is the medium of sound but is inaccessible to all other senses. The harmony between these elements is increasingly imbalanced due to a variety of reasons. War between countries for land and its natural resources claim innocent lives and threaten national security. Waterways are more and more congested and polluted with commercial traffic thus reducing the number of species that can survive in this fragile ecosystem. Fire is being used as a weapon against nature to burn forests and reclaim large tracts of land for human habitation. The ozone depletion in the Earth’s stratosphere has been steadily escalating since the 1970s and greenhouse gases produced by human activity are leading to alarming levels of global warming.It is against this backdrop, that these five new works on canvas, each measuring 12 x 8 feet along with five objects that will depict the delicate state of these five elements, have been created. I have interwoven my recent experience in Kochi and Muziris while executing this site-specific project for the Biennale.