Ashish Khuswaha highlights the issue of an unmitigated urban sprawl that is taking a toll on the environment and the natural world. By Team Viva
Mumbai-based artist Ashish Khushwaha, who has been painting from the age of 14, peoples his watercolour abstracts of the urbanscape with animals and birds, some of them waning or fading away in a runny drip, signifying the loss of natural habitat to rapacious human greed. Talking about his latest collection, The Inheritance of loss, the artist says, “My paintings are silent conversations. I always think of this earth as a place where there is harmony between animals and human beings. But man takes away the idea of habitat from animals and birds. When I travel by train from one place to another, I see this degradation around me. There are girders of development which are eating into virgin land, upturned barren earth which should have been green. I believe that art must communicate, it must tell a story and it must have a message. The natural world and the man-made one — these are two halves of a whole.”
So we have rhinos from Kaziranga, deer with antlers, peacocks and birds amid brick and mortar being piled up and aircraft dotting the skyline. They all look into the visitor’s eyes, as if asking questions of the environmentalist-artist. They are still and defined amid the backdrop of molten, perhaps metaphorically an ever-changing, urban montage. The artist probably wants to focus on the animal, which is otherwise lost in the destructive chaos of the environment.
“I’m an artist but I believe in creating works that bring together the idea of putting lifeless houses being made from bricks and cement and steel along with life-like birds and animals. As an artist, I’m making an object commentary from the many highrises and I’m telling a story of the shrinking space between animals and man. Tomorrow this story will make history because we will be looking at the endangering and extinction of animals and birds because of our selfish habits. If my canvasses and watercolours tell the story, our story, a human story, then in a hundred years, they can be considered an art reference, when like the sparrows, we will hardly see these beautiful birds and animals. My life on the road is reflected in the works I create in my studio. And in many ways, each canvas or watercolour is the present-day planet,” says Khushwaha.
“I don’t want to be appreciated for the composition or the palette of my colour tones. I want people to peer inside my works to see what I represent —I want my works to inform, to provoke discussion —and to raise ideas on the protection of the habitat,” he adds.
Khushwaha was passionate about painting since his childhood but could not pursue it seriously because of his financial situation. “I am fortunate enough that my parents encouraged me in every phase of my life despite the odds and my passion for art made me overcome all the hardships,” says the artist, who in his early years was influenced by the work of Sudhanshu Suthar the most.
Art, he believes, is a universal language and doesn’t need translation. “When visitors walk into the gallery and stay silent for some minutes, I hope they can feel my art and interpret their own feelings. I get inspired by life and the events that take place in the environment and express them with my own perspective. My exhibition raises questions about contemporary realities and leaves viewers deeply disturbed because it is the beauty of a graceful deer and a rapturous peacock that stirs them out of their stupor. The only heritage we have is our planet. These acrylic colours try to tell stories about degradation of the planet. It gives us an incentive and hope to create a pristine planet,” says Khushwaha.
About future plans and collaborations, the artist says he is looking forward to exhibit his works in galleries around the country till 2018. “Through my art, I want to raise an awareness about ecological balance and the protection of habitat.”