The afterlife is mine

Standing underneath the dome of the National Gallery of Modern Art NGMA in Colaba we listen to what sounds like the summer buzz of insects Its Mumbaibased Prabhakar Pachpute scratching away with charcoal pencils bringing life to a wasteland on the wall of the third floor rotunda The reverberating murmur we imagine is a fitting background score to his upcoming exhibition at the famed galleryOpening tomorrow no it wasnt the locust cloud is curated by Zasha Colah and Luca Cerizza and heralded as Pachputes first institutional solo It is a defining moment in the 30yearold artists career which spans four international festivals two solos in Mumbai and Kolkata and a number of group shows But for now Pachpute is focused on the circular wall the largest canvas he has worked on Adding finishing details to the 11part surreal story splashed on the wall he says The title is meant to evoke a question from visitors If it wasnt the locusts then who is responsible for the situation of the coal mines Who are the real landeatersHis hands and face are stained with black dust and charcoal is more than just the medium he works with It is the very substance of his artCalling NGMAs rotunda his largest canvas yet Pachpute started work on it on March 29 The murals made of charcoal and pastels will be washed away when the exhibition ends PicsAtul KambleBorn into a family of farmersturnedcoal miners in Sasti Chandrapur district of Maharashtra Pachpute has consistently evoked the landscape of his hometown Canary in a Coal Mine his first solo show in 2012 observed the lives of coal miners in Chandrapur The characters from that show mdash miners with lampheads drones and owls mdash resurface in the new sitespecific exhibition but Pachpute has expanded his geography He now observes the afterlife of miningSecond life of a mineLooking at transformations the last few years have made Pachpute into a resourceful opportunist of this underworld Last year while showing his works at the Istanbul Biennial he visited the 5000yearold salt mines in Cankiri supposed to last for the next 400 years After the Sao Paulo Biennial 2014 he explored the iron mines and gold mines on the edge of the Amazon During a residency in Florence in 2013 he visited the famed marble mines of Carrara from where the stuff of the Italian Renaissance came But far from a map of mines the story he chooses to tell is of a transformed colliery in GermanyWhile exhibiting at The Beast and the Sovereign in Stuttgart 2015 I saw photos of the Halde Haniel coal mine in Bottorop which has been converted into an amphitheatre and a space for public sculptures There is a need to think along these lines in Chandrapur and the state of Madhya Pradesh It costs a lot of money to build say an amphitheatre but we need to think of alternatives he saysPachputersquos first solo in Mumbai held at Clark House in 2012 observed the lives of Chandrapurs miners PicClark House InitiativeRescuing a wasteland ravaged by mining has been experimented the world over In Poland the Wieliczka salt mine is now a wedding venue and the Cricova wine cellar in Moldova was once quarried for limestone For India Pachpute suggests more utilitarian alternatives My grandfather a farmer had no option but to turn to mining a government job with Western Coalfields Ltd Now what can we do with a dead mine that is unfit for farming he asksOver in Chandrapur there is an intellectual movement towards collective farming as Colah puts it Kishore Kawate a poet from Rajura is part of Sapta Ranga a collective of coal miners and even a chaiseller The sevenmember group which will perform tomorrow at the exhibitions opening has been probing the twin issues of mining and farming Kawate recalls a soyabean crop in 2007 that was defamed after it was fed sewage water from a neighbouring residential quarter for mining officialsIts twisted agreed Even more so when he speaks of the dangers of dead quarries A coal mine in Rajura was closed 15 years ago but wasnt stable Water accumulated in it and there was a risk of people falling in Then there was the woman who committed suicide by jumping into it he says His Marathi poem Rahim Uncle and the Goat Rahim Kaka ani Bakri is based on this quarry that swallowed people whole In Pachputes murals you will find a reference to this verseNot dark as it seemsBut Pachputes vision is not of a bleak dystopia Look at these miners who are hanging on They are hoping to float away to better lands he says drawing our attention a bunch of miners suspended from a cloud We are not sure that this is a pretty picture of hope with a stark recall of Vidarbhas farmer suicides Pachpute allows us our interpretationAs we walk around the circular canvas curator Cerizza says This circular narrative shows that man can retransform Farms become mines and mines become farms its a loop Is that amphitheatre the end or the beginning Then again its a question that Pachpute might ask himself he has come from the fringes of Maharashtra and alternative contemporary art spaces to a national institution with this story of the state