First Published on February 13, 2025
Where should we go after the last frontiers?
Where should the birds fly after the last sky?
Where should the plants sleep after the last breath of air?
We will write our names with scarlet steam.
We will cut off the hand of the song to be finished by our flesh.
We will die here, here in the last passage.
Here and here our blood will plant its olive tree.
The piercing question in the title of Prajakta Potnis’ exhibition, Where should the birds fly after the last sky?, at Project 88, Mumbai, is borrowed from the poem “The Earth is Closing on Us” by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.
There is a cinematic suspense in the dimly-lit, noir spaces in Potnis’s works, which are devoid of human presence. Each time-stamped moment is an acknowledgement of a society besieged by an ominous future. Potnis channels her repressed trauma of the collective post-Covid reality, the sense of futile anger with the recent genocide in Gaza, and the discontent around toxic politics and socio-economic disparities, to foretell a vision of a humanity trundling towards the edge of an existential precipice. Her spaces are physical, but also psychological; they carry the abstraction of feelings and the distillation of thoughts, which are tormented by a sense of injustice that one perceives but feels powerless to change.
Most paintings are backgrounded in bluish greys, which create this quiet, sombre mood. Made by applying seven or eight layers of acrylic and gouache on thick 640 gsm archival paper, they acquire a material heaviness, which also conveys the depth and intensity of the emotions felt by the artist, and the time invested in expressing these ideas and sentiments. The slates, comprising of subtly painted clouds, which symbolize the night sky as a metaphor for a lucid nightmare, punctuate the paintings and help stitch the show together.
The work “4:37 am” (2024) captures this eerie existential dissonance. There is a tap with a cloth covering its mouth and spreading out downwards. The flowing drapery appears paradoxically rigid. Since no water flows out, it alludes to the lifelessness that seems to pervade. This painting can be connected to the earlier multimedia works Potnis exhibited at the Sharjah Biennial 2023, which revolved around domestic maids in Mumbai, the rhythm of whose lives was often held hostage by the odd hours at which the municipal pumps supplied water.
In “1:48 am” (2024), a tell-tale crack has emerged in the empty space inside the room. It has a three-dimensional form, which casts a long shadow and occupies the proscenium. But the writing metaphorically seems to be on the wall -- we live in a society fractured by prevailing injustices. Potnis seems to question the impotency of the judiciary, whether it is the International Court of Justice for the victims of genocide, or courts closer home.
She carries forward that thought in “1:14 am” (2024), where the cracks start spreading on the floor of the house, and resemble a patch of soil overbaked in drought. Instead of a source of light which spotlights the issues in other works, here there is a fan in the background, literally fanning the dust off the cracks to make them more prominent. It is an oblique reference to the farmer suicides in Maharashtra and other states, and questions government policies that have failed to assure citizens of welfare and support.
While the paintings and slates are stark in their frozen moments, two video-based works infuse a sense of movement. The first is Waiting (2024), which connotes a feeling of anxiety through the depiction of a man twitching his leg involuntarily. The second work, Dancing Stones (2024), a single-channel video which projects on the floor from the ceiling, is a realistic 3D animation showing a large number of stones swirling around. They mimic the movement of dry leaves rustling in the wind, creating a vortex. The intensity ebbs and flows, and the stones come closer and then drift apart. In their materiality and perceived weightlessness, at a cosmic level, they seem to resemble an assemblage of interplanetary dust, hurtling through space. Presented at the end of the show, the work reignites a dialogue with the paintings on the wall -- the floor in the video is cracked, and the random yet synchronized motion of these chips of stone seem to reinforce that the cracks in our society have acquired a life of their own, setting off a chain of events that are now well beyond our control.
Salient existential cracks and fissures -- whether they be in glaciers and ice shelves because of global warming; in social structures, engineered by Right-Wing politicians out to dehumanize immigrants and minorities; or on online platforms partitioned by echo chambers -- all resonate with the question Potnis poses in her title. Much like one sees things in the darkness as the eye adjusts to the absence of light, Potnis’s dimly-lit works implore the viewer to look hard and contemplate harsh realities and truths. Dauntingly, the exhibition also attempts to bridge the dichotomous spaces between leading us towards an unhealable future and offering us much needed catharsis in the present.
Where should the birds fly after the last sky? will be on at Project 88, Mumbai, from January 9 to February 28, 2025.
Anindo Sen is an independent art writer, researcher and curator based in Bengaluru.