A requiem for lost languages

Manish Pushkale pays tribute to lost languages through his immersive installations, currently on view in Paris

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When Boa Sr died on 26 January 2010, she took something precious with her. The octogenarian was the last surviving speaker of the Aka-Bo language, one of the 10 Great Andamanese languages. Also known as the "language of the birds", Aka-Bo was used by Boa to communicate with her feathered friends, whom she referred to as her ancestors. The story of this extinct language now lies at the heart of artist Manish Pushkale's show, To Whom The Bird Should Speak?, currently on view at the Musée Guimet in Paris.

The museum has one of the largest collections of Asian art outside Asia. Pushkale, whose work casts a light on the disappearance of indigenous cultures in the wake of global change, follows in the footsteps of his mentor, Syed Haider Raza, whose mandalas were presented at the Guimet earlier this year, and Jayashree Chakravarty, who showed her installation in 2017.

Pushkale first heard the story from Prof. Ganesh Devy, an Indian cultural activist and literary critic, at an event in 2019 organised by the Raza Foundation, a nonprofit. Prof. Devy's talk, which touched on the fragility of languages, moved him deeply. And, during the pandemic, a script started emerging spontaneously in Pushkale's drawings. But it was indecipherable. It later dawned on the artist that he was trying to locate and capture an oral language that had perished.