Illesha Khandelwal
Illesha is an interdisciplinary artist studying the geographies of the heart. She makes photographs, poems, videos, music, paper, books, and drawings. Her practice is primarily concerned with landscapes, work that pushes us to reconsider the depth of our relationships to places and to each other. She is the founder of ikattha - an independent artist-run collaborative studio space that was based in Mumbai, and now isnomadic. She believes artists need to come together to articulate the invisible feelings of our time. Documents of life, proof of existence, archives of love. Her practice is a tool to walk the greatest distance we will span in our lifetimes - the journey of one heart to another, so together we may contemplate the light in the distance.
Salvador do Mundo: a highly biodiverse wetland ecosystem, a village located just east of Porvorim, Goa. Teeming with migratory birds, otters, crocodiles, bats and numerous plant species. A huge carbon store and barrier to flooding, and a place for families in the village to fish for daily catch. Like many sensitive ecosystems across the planet, the Salvador mangrove is facing immense pollution, with plastic bags and beer bottles clogging every stream and root system. In a community effort to research and collaborate towards the sustainability of Salvador do Mundo, a collective of environmental experts, activists, the panchayat, students, local farmers and artists have come together under the organization Sensible Earth. As the project artist, illesha will document and research this journey through photographs and short films, collecting an emotional environmental history of Salvador do Mundo. These will collect into a virtual ‘site’: an interactive, immersive archive of information that acts as a window to see, and feel, inside the process of a local group of humans attempting to understand and rewrite their relationship to nature.
