While actors turn into politicians, and politicians turn into actors, artist Valentina Furian treads the line of fact and fiction — hoping that her work helps the viewer differentiate the two. The Aarey forest has been at the centre of much-needed debate. For the past week, it's also been a centre of reflection for the 29-year-old Italian where she has been working on a site-specific intervention — a combination of photography and videography — a glimpse of which you'll get to see at Kala Ghoda's Method, a contemporary arts space, in a show titled Before.

Furian enters the gallery with a 7x14 foot billboard. What seems like just a scene from the forest with a peek-a-boo into a solitary leopard is actually a constructed diorama. Pointing towards the billboard, she tells me more about her process, "I went to the Natural History Museum in Milan where I took photos of the displays comprising built environments. So the landscapes you see inside them aren't real but plastic with animals made out of taxidermy." Then, Furian matches the print with a physical location in Aarey, which a local family living close to the limits of the forest guided her to. In the two-day exhibition that starts tomorrow, the artist will showcase short clips of this juxtaposition.