GUJARAT, AHMEDABAD | 10th FEBRUARY 2026 — Mrugen Rathod, through his work ‘Mari Vaadi Ma’, showcases the story of Gir lions in the third edition of Sustaina India art exhibition, titled “Bitter Nectar,” from 1 to 15 February 2026 at Bikaner House, New Delhi. Sustaina India—an exhibition where science meets art to inspire collective climate action—is a collaborative initiative by the think tank Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) and acclaimed artist duo Thukral & Tagra, and this is happening on the sidelines of the India Art Fair in New Delhi (06 to 09 February 2025). In the figure of the “aam-sher” ecological change, cultural memory, and survival converge; he allows the pressures of conservation, cultivation and extraction to be experienced as something lived rather than abstract concepts.
About his work at Sustaina India, ‘મારીવાડીમાં’ (Mari Vaadi Ma), Mrugen Rathod, said, ‘Gir today is marked by two quiet convergences: mono-species and mono-culture. A conversation with the buffer-zone-dwelling farmers, who invited me to visit their mango orchards to see lions, becomes the point from which this work unfolds. It reveals the blurring boundaries between forest and farmland. The 543 kesari lion sculptures register the shifting distribution of the species–many now inhabit non-forest and buffer-zone territories dominated by mango orchards. Mounted on wheels and tinted by the fruit, the lions move through a landscape in transition, where ecologies are altered from grasslands to orchards.”
Sustaina India III reflects on a seemingly simple impulse—the pursuit of ripeness, nourishment, and sweetness—and reveals the complex socio-ecological and political conditions that now shape it. Heat and harvest no longer arrive in agreement; erratic rains interrupt ripening, winters soften or arrive out of turn, and long-held agricultural knowledge is unsettled. Through these temporal mismatches, the exhibition traces how fractures in climate systems travel outward, affecting labour, ecology, consumption, and community life.
Thukral & Tagra, curators of Sustaina India, said, “In its third year, Sustaina peels through urgent questions of climate change, tracing the shifting knowledge of fruiting cycles strained by extreme heat, erratic rainfall, and uncertainty by the means of the artistic practice. Bringing together works from across India, from Ladakh to Kerala and Assam to Gujarat, the exhibition maps a shared ecology of climate action and inquiry into our desire for sweetness, into the nuances of nectar collection.”
Mihir Shah, Director of Strategic Communications at CEEW, added, “Amidst the turbulence of geopolitics and a reordering of the world order, climate change continues to remain a critical risk. 2025 was the third hottest year on record. Climate impacts are already reshaping what India grows, consumes, and relies on. Sustaina India 3 grounds climate conversations in lived experience, showing how disruptions to food systems and seasonal rhythms directly affect communities and livelihoods. Effective climate action must engage with these realities and the knowledge embedded within them as we look for more solutions.”
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