What is Left, What is Dead 2025 - ongoing
Through found materials and discarded objects, What Is Left, What Is Dead develops a dialogue with the landscape of Alang, a ship-recycling town along the Gulf of Kambhat in Gujarat. Once at the forefront of India's industrial expansion, Alang, now sees a gradual decline with communities migrating elsewhere due to the closure of shipyards.
With an approach rooted in New Materialism, the project seeks to reveal the invisible contaminants in the air and soil, accumulated over decades of ship breaking, burning, and disposal of toxic and biochemical hazardous materials into the environment. This inquiry into the politics of waste is further explored through a found map of a German chemical tanker “Bau Nr. 216 Norasia Pearl” from 1986 and soil samples collected from sites contaminated by chemical residues. Objects that originate from the dismantled ships were gathered and repurposed into pinhole cameras in collaboration with local residents, turning debris into instruments of documentation. The resulting series of prints on expired photographic paper reimagines an alternate cartography of Alang through its material traces, adopting an archaeological approach to image-making.