NT BUZZ
After exhibiting their work in Goa as part of Goa Water Stories, Goan artists Ashish Phaldesai, Pradeep Naik, Satyam Malhar and Wenceslaus Mendes are now taking their work to Fulcrum, Mumbai.
‘A Disquiet Tide – matiutrantvirta’ which opens on June 11 examines the mangrove ecologies of Goa as lived environments shaped by tides, labour, memory and time. Far from being passive ecosystems, these landscapes are living infrastructures sustained through generations of ecological knowledge, care, and negotiation with water. Along estuarine edges, land and sea, cultivation and submergence, stability and change exist in constant relation. Today, these environments are increasingly unsettled. Rising seas, shifting salinity, and changing tidal rhythms disrupt inherited ways of living and working with the landscape. Mangroves become sites where ecological, social, and perceptual systems no longer align neatly, holding within them the friction of ancestral practices, present uncertainties, and emerging futures. Rather than seeking a return to balance, ‘A Disquiet Tide’ asks: How do we live with systems already in flux? It invites attention to conditions where stability can no longer be assumed and where new forms of relation, care and coexistence must continually be negotiated.
With the monsoons all set to set in on the western coast and with both Mumbai and Goa destroying the mangroves, this exhibition seeks to sound the alarm, says Mendes.
“The monsoon is arriving. There will be flooding. Mangroves are our first barriers of resilience. Hence, we need to have these conversations to learn and share each other’s failures and success,” he says.
