Water has an invaluable presence in the lives of all living beings. It has, of course, an essential material presence in everyday life as a commodity and often, as a pawn in political negotiations. It also has associated narratives of deeply rooted cultural memories. This exhibition is premised on the idea that water has many tales to tell. The project draws its energy from the video double-bill, titled ‘Water-Wars’, a collaboration, posted by economist Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee and graphic novelist Sarnath Banerjee. The videos bring up the possible causes of the currently-felt and growing water crisis in the country, due to the rampant water-level depletion caused by the popularly cultivated, high-yielding varieties of cereal crops and the heavy usage of water per unit of produce. Sarnath’s characteristic, wry and sardonic, parallel narrative-illustrative projections weave through Abhijit Vinayak’s humour-laced monologues, forming an impactful, dialogic juxtaposition of ideas. The second pair of videos is a curatorial interjection, an endeavour to round off the conversation on the tales water tells, by situating the micro-view of the water-related predicament in the relatively dry and water-challenged region of Birbhum.
