Lakshmi Nivas Collective Delves Into the Coexistence of the Human and the Non-human at Biennale

KOCHI:
The animal torsos in graphite, terracotta and palm-wood propped on wooden legs with mouths open provide a reality check on today’s environs in a frightening manner. Standing for the animal family, they seem to hint that the venue was once their habitat.

The sculptures, titled Resistance Prayer Song 2023, by Lakshmi Nivas Collective, featured in Island Warehouse, Willingdon Island at Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB), are a grim reminder of inequity among those entitled to the planet.

Their installation includes another set of sculptures, Faith Was Never About Us (2025), of entangled root-like forms with feet grounded in the shapes of cow and goat hoofs and legs of poultry; enfolding man-animal bond in abstract imageries. It also includes a video, titled Wait, on seasons cycling round of humankind, animals and plants and their co-existence.

Today while the latter two strive for ecological balance, the former keeps disrupting the natural rhythms in human-centric ways.

Lakshmi Nivas Collective comprising city-bred visual artist Sunoj D and Namrata Neog, who is into archaeology, anthropology and history, was set up in 2018.

“We wanted to explore nature and we leased some land in Parudur, Sunoj’s ancestral place in Palakkad, Kerala from a relative. We began to grow indigenous and extinct. For manure, we bought a cow and over the days each cycle of cultivation and foraging opened more insights into life. Animals are our lens to understand ourselves and the landscapes,” said Namrata.

The shift from comfort of the city is not easy for the duo but very enlightening, marked by complementarity in their fields of work. “This is our new university and our brainstorming on humankind in landscapes offered new perspectives and language for our works,” she explained.

The materials used are as ancient as the bonding between man and nature and layered with narratives. ‘Resistance Prayer Song’ animal forms are made of graphite on terracotta and palmyra or the ice-apple palm wood. Terracotta was revered like earth by the ancients, used for pottery and tool making along with iron before graphite took over and led to more modern developments.

Palmyra has a long history too, dense and black and indigenous to the Palakkad and Tamil Nadu landscapes.

‘In Faith Was Never About Us’, the duo has used red-oxide and cement and metal reflecting the flooring of homes in coastal areas of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Even as the root-like forms are cemented, the human-centric work raises narratives on human and non-human connect and human intervention.

They raise questions on domestication of animals and hierarchy and how each structure and concept made in the name of development to ease human life has least empathy or thought for the non-human world as seen in the treatment of domesticated animals, hybridisation, guinea pigs for experiments, over-production, artificial fodder, insemination, even privatisation of veterinary hospitals.

The video installation, Wait (2025), showcases seasons and the human outlook on seasons. While humankind may dread monsoon, there are other creatures and plants awaiting it, underlining the relevance of each ecological system in life. Humankind hardly looks forward to it as a blessing, to take a break, rejuvenate and ruminate over life and the need to coexist with the non-human.

The installation gives a visual language to the coexistence of landscapes and man-made structure, concepts of migrant-urban societies, industrialisation, gigantic structures that seem to ease life and their true repercussions on the planet that one is part of.