What constitutes a land­scape in the Anthro­po­cene Age? The rolling meadows of Constable have long turned into condominium blocks and industrial complexes and Gopal Ghose’s idyllic countryside is increasingly being gobbled by a hungry city. Where, then, does the artist seek aesthetic pleasure? Suman Chandra, the winner of the fourth edition of the CIMA Awards, finds beauty — albeit one that is soiled with horror — in and around landscapes that have been ravaged by coal mining in his solo exhibition, Silent Vision (till August 19 at CIMA). The subterranean world of coal mines and the lives of miners have been a subject of interest to a number of great artists, including Vincent van Gogh, Constantin Meunier and the Ashington Group, whose members were miners themselves. While the squalor and darkness in the works of Meunier or the Pitmen Painters (as the Ashington Group is popularly known) make them instantly recognisable and mournful, Chandra’s vocabulary is more terrifying in its almost clinical
depiction of coal mining through his employment of a deeply technical idiom.

Chandra uses engineering grids, graphs and other technical representational traditions of collieries to map these minescapes. The different layers and geological substances of the mines and the land around them are marked out with diverse patterns painstakingly filled out on meticulously hand-drawn graphs (Mauna Mukharata, picture). In this purely materialistic vision of coal mines that seeks to extract maximum value from the land, there is no space for human presence. The ‘neatness’ of these avaricious designs is sullied by the undulating land formations made from coal and brick dust, sand and charcoal, reminding viewers of the hideous disfiguring of the landscapes that these sanitised maps represent. What makes this juxtaposition more striking is the contrast between the shades of pink and red used in the graphs and
the dark tones of the coal dust and sand.

At times, the neatness of the graphs is overlaid with circular shapes that do not follow any pattern — are these illegal rat-hole mine chutes that endanger the lives of people who are forced into these narrow, unstable openings to eke out a living? Elsewhere (Pelabata - 14), the orderliness of the reddish graph lines is broken by white negative space in the shape of a tree at the margins of a cavernous mine as if the tree exists only in memory, its existence swallowed up by the yawning chasm of the mine. Misshapen patches of gridlines are also cleverly used to represent torn bandages stuck on the earth’s wounds in some of the works.

Signs of life, when they do appear, are pushed to the margins by the ever-spreading mines. In Niyamita Abadhyata - 1, for instance, life and livelihood overlap in a set of five works. Humans and animals are reduced to white silhouettes in the mostly barren foreground, while charcoal-coloured hills take over the horizon. Cabbages and coal chunks lie strewn side by side, almost inseparable. Tiny black dots shroud the landscape and all hints of life: the coal dust is everywhere — on produce and inside one’s very veins. Hints of the living can also be found in the series titled Prabaha - sanketa. Chandra pays tribute to the Sohrai tradition of wall paintings. But these indigenous patterns are singed onto the walls of the hut, indicating the terrible impact that coal mining has on miners and their families. What heightens the tension is the knowledge that in order to achieve this singed effect, the artist exposed his works to coal-mine gases like methane and carbon monoxide, substances that miners inhale on a daily basis.

The skilled use of media — mine gases are just one instance of this — lends to Chandra’s works a strong textural element. Charcoal as a medium is already textured, but the use of actual coal dust and sand helps convey the ruggedness of the terrain. This is contrasted in places with the flatness of watercolour or the plainness of white paper to great effect in some of the works.

While most of Chandra’s works are indictments of the exploitative practice of coal mining, his nightscapes offer some relief. The darkness of the night cloaks the gaping lacerations on the surface of the Earth and the Moon shines in an inky black sky, offering a glimmer of hope and an escape from the darkness of reality.