Scrap to sculpture

Emerging artists are sustaining the legacy of modernist painter S.H. Raza, quite literally

- FAIZAL KHAN

Narendra Dewangan is pained by the rampant mining that is wreaking havoc in his home state of Chhattisgarh. A Master of Fine Arts in sculpture, he channels his creative energy to vent his discontent at the destruction of earth that is leading to catastrophic consequences. His new sculpture, titled Environment Balancer, directly addresses the ecological distress.

"We, human beings, are destroying nature through indiscriminate development," says Dewangan, a former student of Indira Kala Sangeet University in Khairagarh, Rajnandgaon district of Chhattisgarh. Environment Balancer shows a city built inside and outside the earth linked only by a huge tree. "We are not even sparing the ground beneath us," laments the artist.

Dewangan is part of four young sculptors from Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh who gathered abandoned automobile parts like motorcycle wheels, chains, and bearings to create works inspired by Madhya Pradesh-born modernist painter Sayed Haider Raza to mark his ninth death anniversary on July 23. The sculptures by the four artists using discarded material collected from Mandla, where Raza is buried next to his father's grave, reflect his artistic philosophy of the infinite, seen in his trademark bindu paintings, underlining the importance of preserving the planet.