Annatto, Nutmeg, Tobacco, Cotton, Coffee, Tea, Cashew, Clove, Cinchona, Cinnamon, Rubber, Pineapple, Star Anise, Madder Root, Poppy, Indigo, Hemp, Cardamom, Sugarcane, Pepper

The ark, a vessel of the apocalypse is construed here as a cultural archive that is weighted by the history and legacy of colonialism that engendered the migration of people, animal/plant species and other artefacts, that forever reconfigured global ecology.
The work explores the cultural and historical processes that shaped global ecology- which is often thought of as ‘natural’. All of the seed/plants in this work are taken from archival images of natural history drawings done during the colonial period when India’s material environment became increasingly subject to scientific scrutiny, much of it by Western naturalists and botanists.
Most of these plants /seeds are either native to southern India (mostly Tamilnadu, Kerala and parts of Karnataka), some were stolen and planted on an individual whim (Coffee) or were planted by colonists in southern India as a plantation crops (Cinchona, rubber tea etc).
While referencing how the exchange of plants shaped the culture and ecology of the modern world, this work also brings to the fore how colonialism is a historical and an ongoing driver of our current climate situation.