A groundbreaking new exhibition titled "The Land Sings Back" is currently on display at the Drawing Room gallery in London, presenting a powerful collection of artwork that reimagines the relationship between art, land, and indigenous rights. The exhibition features thirteen artists with ancestral connections to South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, who are transforming the traditional role that sketching and drawing have played in conquest and colonialism into a tool for reclaiming indigenous knowledge and promoting environmental justice.
The exhibition draws its conceptual foundation from ecofeminism, a movement first named by French writer Françoise d'Eaubonne in her 1974 book "Feminism or Death." Ecofeminism argues that patriarchy and colonialism are fundamentally interconnected systems. According to this framework, the subjugation of women and marginalized communities has severed their connection to their ancestral lands while suppressing their myths and stories, creating a dangerous imbalance between nature and humanity.
The diverse artworks on display incorporate archival research, soundscapes, zines, ceramics, found objects, and ephemera, deliberately dissolving the traditional boundaries between various media. This approach challenges the institutionalization of knowledge and questions who has the authority to define and preserve cultural understanding. The artists use these mixed-media approaches to create works that are both visually striking and conceptually challenging.
The exhibition opens with the compelling work of Lado Bai, a Bhil artist from Madhya Pradesh, India, whose piece "Peeple ka ped (Peepal Tree)" dates from the early 1980s. Bai masterfully combines traditional motifs with contemporary symbolism to demonstrate a profound connection to the natural world. The Bhil religion is deeply rooted in animism, the belief that everything from trees and rivers to rocks and animals possesses a spiritual essence that must be respected through rituals and offerings.
Historical context reveals the significance of this spiritual connection: in the 1901 census, 97 percent of Bhils identified as animists, and they continue to maintain this connection through stories and folklore that form the foundation of Bai's artistic practice. Like much indigenous art from India, her work displays a deceptive simplicity, but within the dots and lines lies a deeper narrative of ancient knowledge. Each painting presents an episode in the larger story of Bhil ritual and tradition, creating a visual encyclopedia of cultural memory.
Another featured Indian artist is Manjot Kaur, who reimagines historical miniature paintings from Mughal art and Rajasthani tradition. Kaur uses anthropomorphism to challenge binary thinking, offering a hopeful response to the climate crisis and species extinction. Her work goes beyond merely representing traditional stories and rituals; she actively reimagines mythologies for what she envisions as a post-queer world—a future where people no longer feel confined by traditional identity labels—or even a post-human world.
Kaur's series, titled "Chthonic Beings," takes its name from Greek mythological creatures of the underworld. These seemingly monstrous beings actually represent gods of fertility and death, with both concepts coexisting and fluidly merging into one another. In her 2025 work "The Convocation of Eagles," Kaur decenters human perspectives, instead imagining local Indian species such as blackbuck and great Indian bustard playing the roles of protectors and caregivers in her reimagined mythological landscape.
The exhibition raises profound questions about representation and power: What does a line on paper truly mean? Whose labor remains hidden in these artistic expressions? Who possesses the authority to imbue meaning in these lines? Historically, lines have been drawn to divide people, marginalize communities, and push them away from mainstream society where power resides. In this exhibition, however, the lines serve the opposite purpose.
The artistic lines presented here are deliberately discordant, but only to challenge the disharmony and oppression of both past and present. These lines can be uncomfortable at times, as demonstrated in Anupam Roy's work, which employs satirical imagery and protest poster aesthetics to draw attention to the land rights movement opposing numerous mining projects in rural Bengal.
Roy's work directly addresses contemporary issues: in February 2025, local activists from West Bengal's Birbhum district demanded the cancellation of mining work in the Deocha-Pachami-Dewanganj-Harisingha coal block. This mining project led to the displacement of thousands of indigenous people from their ancestral lands. Roy's drawings, including his 2023 piece "Time is Sloshing 2," demand urgent action for subaltern subjects—those people who have been historically marginalized and excluded from dominant power structures—and highlight their precarious condition within contemporary capitalist systems.
The larger question in Roy's work concerns the nature of truth itself, specifically whose version of truth gets represented in the images that surround us daily. Truth and propaganda operate on the same axis, a reality that has become increasingly apparent in today's political climate. Roy's work forces viewers to confront these uncomfortable questions about representation, power, and the construction of narrative.
"The Land Sings Back" has been beautifully curated by Natasha Ginwala, the artistic director of Colomboscope. The exhibition creates an deeply emotional experience that deliberately leaves visitors with more questions than answers. However, this questioning nature represents exactly what exceptional art should accomplish—challenging viewers to think beyond their preconceptions and engage with complex global issues.
The exhibition will remain on display at Drawing Room in London until December 14, 2025, providing visitors with an extended opportunity to engage with these powerful works that challenge colonial narratives while celebrating indigenous knowledge systems and environmental justice.
