IF A TREE FALLS IN A FOREST

IF A TREE FALLS IN A FOREST

IF A TREE FALLS IN A FOREST

This work begins with a question—an inquiry that lingers like the slow erosion of a riverbed or the shadow of a tree stretching across a fractured land. In Singrauli, a coal mining town in central India, where the earth has been split open and forests gutted, the question hangs in the air, heavy with coal dust and the whispers of what has been lost.

The work is an assemblage of fragments—voices, images, sounds—that trace a landscape reshaped by extraction and resistance. It maps not by borders but by the lived experiences of those who have fought, dreamed, and survived within these forests. Indigenous communities of Singrauli, their lives entwined with the roots of this land, speak through stories, songs, and dances. The project explores the relationships between people and land, memory and loss, resistance and survival.

Memory here is alive—the forest remembers, even as it is stripped; the people remember, even as they are displaced. But what happens when the stories are forgotten? When the land no longer recognizes itself? This project invites us to listen—to the forest, to its people, to the echoes of their shared history. It is a reminder that the land is not a thing to be owned but a living entity, and our survival depends on our ability to hear its voice.