Fossils of Force reflects upon the condition of farmers amid the current political and ecological realities of India and the world. It extends the conversation from the artist’s preceding exhibition in this space — Indelible Black Marks — which unveiled the permanent inscriptions on land that continue to impact food systems in the aftermath of the Green Revolution.
In the series of works presented here, the artist revisits his experiences from the 2020-2021 farmers' movement in the National Capital Region of India and the iconography of nails and barricades that became part of its everyday landscape. For Singh, these forms of control percolate beyond protest sites and are inherent to the infrastructures of policy and welfare. These invisible dividers put insurmountable pressure on the ones who still choose to feed the country.
This exhibition is at once a memorial for the 738 farmers who lost their lives in the farmers' movement fighting for our collective future, and a site for langar (the communal feast from Sikh tradition), which upholds the ethos of feeding everyone equally despite the odds. It mobilizes the power of art as visual poetry to make evident the hidden contradictions of our contemporary agrarian realities.
Text: Srinivas Aditya Mopidevi
Curatorial Advisor: Birgid Uccia