Three-fold story

Artist Manav Gupta’s movies on the environment encourage individuals to make a difference.

The films, On My Eyot (on climate change), Rainforests (on eco-systems) and Beyond Boundaries (on sustainable development), are part of five films that were commissioned by the Indian government as public service messages for broadcast on climate change.

The films, along with Gupta’s paintings and performance art, form the Travelling Trilogy, an exhibition that will travel all over the world. It starts in Delhi in February, in partnership with Ekatra, an NGO.

Gupta’s poems on the same themes were also part of the exhibition. In Beyond Politics, Beyond Copenhagen, For Our Children, he writes, “Let us stop a while, while doing what we are doing, and begin to change what we can change...”

Talking about this piece, Gupta explains, “I wanted to drive home the message that we have to go beyond Copenhagen, beyond drawing room politics and sensitise ourselves, and try and make a change on an individual level.”

Gupta, whose works have been auctioned at Christie’s and Bonham’s and are a part of collections in various international museums, has also pioneered a style of performance art he calls ‘Jugalbandi’. As part of the performance, Gupta paints on stage while an artist performs.

“It is the Indian answer to performance art. It is an engagement of different art forms with each other,” says Gupta, who has worked with senior artists such as L Subramaniam, Anup Jalota and Shubha Mudgal in the past.

Manav Gupta is the only painter invited by Ministry of Environment to create one minute films on climate change, biodiversity and sustainable development.

Three 30-sec environment films by artist Manav Gupta in Hindi for Ministry of Environment