Inside Tanmay Shah’s “Borrowed Earth” Exhibition: From Ownership to Responsibility
Updated On: 21 April, 2026 07:51 PM IST | Mumbai | Buzz
Borrowed Earth explores climate change, responsibility, and perception through photography and painting.

Tanmay Shah, Filmmaker & Visual Artist; Founder & CEO, FridayFictionFilms
1. The title Borrowed Earth carries a powerful philosophy that we are stewards, not owners, of this planet. What drove you to build an entire exhibition around this idea?
It began as a discomfort rather than a clear concept. I kept noticing how confidently we speak about the world, as if it is stable and belonged to us. Cities grow with a sense of inheritance, while consumption carries entitlement and responsibility often comes later. Revisiting familiar places, I saw how subtly they had changed, never dramatically, but enough to unsettle the idea of permanence. That stayed with me. We depend on stability even as it quietly erodes. Ecological thinking disrupts that illusion, reminding us how brief our presence is. Borrowed Earth emerged from this shift, from ownership to responsibility, from taking to questioning what we leave behind.

