This Artist's War on Waste Is Kashmir's Wake-Up Call

Armed with nothing but discarded trash and a fierce sense of duty, a young Kashmiri artist is turning waste into urgent public art, and a message too loud to ignore.

- Fiza Masoodi

On a recent summer morning, as crows circled a trash-strewn canal near the government school playground in Kulgam’s Kulpora, Mudasir Rehman Dar unpacked his kit: crushed bottle caps, torn paper, a spool of jute string, and a stack of flattened cardboard.

He was preparing an art installation with a dozen schoolchildren, part of a self-organized eco-campaign he’s been running for over two years.

The children watched closely as Dar pressed a yellowed polythene wrapper into shape and whispered, more to himself than to anyone else, “Nothing is waste. It’s just waiting to be seen.”

Dar’s eco-campaign is trending at a time when his homeland Kashmir’s beauty is increasingly buried under plastic.

According to a 2023 report by the Jammu & Kashmir Pollution Control Board, over 3,100 metric tons of solid waste are generated across the region every day, with nearly half dumped into open fields and waterways without treatment.

In places like Kulgam, where infrastructure is thin and environmental awareness even thinner, the problem is multiplying.

“There are mounds of garbage where orchards used to be,” said Dar. “We talk of paradise, but we're living in a dump.”

And so, he chose art as his form of resistance.

Dar, 28, is a self-taught artist who has never attended an art school, held a salaried job, or received government funding. He works from a makeshift studio in the back room of his family's modest home, tucked between apple trees and grazing fields.

The walls of his workshop are covered with hanging scraps - painted leaf portraits, a globe made of shredded polythene, a child’s face drawn in ink on torn cardboard.