Students' Biennale 2021: Geographies of Despair

Dipin Chandran, student of Raja Ravi Varma College of Fine Arts, Mavelikkara, Kerala, makes strokes on paper that tell the tales of suffering and loss.

He captures pain and wounds inflicted upon the people..

..and on the land that nurtured them.

His drawings chart barren land, landfills and nature..

..and its exploitations, phenomenon like erosion, depletion and intrusion.

Sangeeta Kodimyala, student of Andhra University, incorporates activities of cultivation and settlement of people in her drawings

..representing how the natural world is being uprooted and geography has evolved or rather deteriorated into a metaphor of struggle of the people settled on it.

Prarthana Karthikeyan, student of Tamil Nadu Dr. J Jeyalalitha Music and Fine Arts University, sketches maps of a region that become bodies denoting the gradual change of the topology through time.

He sketches natural elements with geometrical patterns..

..considering how the land is transforming into uninhabitable regions..

Shubhankar Chandere, student at the Sarojini Naidu School of Art and Communication, University of Hyderabad, captures the inhabitants of the lands responding to their surroundings.

He maps through line both buildings and nature.

In rich colours and mastery of tone, he manages to illustrate the depth of feeling both the artist and his subjects have for the land around them.

He sets out the embodied responses of the inhabitants of the land to its destruction.

He skilfully illustrates feelings of isolation with the solo figures responding to the landscape.