Sven Christian [SC]: Reading your catalogues, I came across the work Sediment (2010–12). It seems relevant to what you’re proposing for the water here?

Vibha Galhotra [VG]: 2005 was the year when I kind of decided to take an artist’s path, after finishing college and trying out a few jobs. I stumbled upon the river that crosses Delhi, which I always mistook as a sewer. My experience with the holy River Yamuna was eye-opening and honestly heartbreaking. Growing up, the river was always this sacred entity we revered in our culture and hymns — a source of life and purity. But when I encountered it closely, what I saw was shocking. The Yamuna in Delhi had become this toxic, lifeless stretch of water, burdened by pollution and neglect. It made me ask: How did we, as a society, let it come to this?

This experience, changed me as a person, as a thinker, as an artist. I’d been thinking about how we could do more socially-engaged work, which was uncommon in India at the time. I started documenting the river, aimlessly. One day this guy was doing his ancestral puja. Out of concern I stopped him from going into the river, as he might get infections, but our brief conversation felt absurd, a theatre of belief and reality. Where he saw the river as a mother goddess, I saw the toxicity of the city, mixed with a little river water, which gets controlled by the upstream states. 

That’s where Sediment was born. For me, it wasn’t just about documenting the river’s state — it was about digging into the deeper layers of what this neglect says about us. The river’s sediment became a metaphor for the weight of our choices: the pollution we ignore, the policies we fail to challenge, the people whose lives are impacted but go unheard. Through this project, I wanted to show that the story of the Yamuna isn’t just a local one; it’s a global pattern of how we treat natural resources. It’s a wake-up call, and I wanted the work to provoke a sense of urgency in people.

The state of the Yamuna was instrumental in shaping my ongoing performative series Who Owns the Water?, initiated in 2018, after which I made a site-specific work in Mongolia, titled Who Owns the Earth? (2016). This project explores the intricate and fraught relationship humanity has with natural resources — resources that are simultaneously abundant and increasingly scarce, due to mismanagement, overconsumption, and climate change. In India, rivers like the Yamuna are deeply spiritual, regarded as living goddesses, yet our treatment of them starkly contradicts this reverence. Similarly, I would like to raise the same question about the Blaublankspruit, the river which borders NIROX Sculpture Park. It stinks of industrial toxins and is asking for help. It is important to voice the river, who questions the ownership. 

Through this work, I investigate the geopolitics of water, where rivers are dammed, diverted, and controlled, reflecting a broader global issue of resource exploitation. These artistic exercises become a metaphor for the countless rivers worldwide that bear the brunt of human intervention. The project isn’t just about water; it’s about power, inequality, and the urgent need for accountability.

Art offers a unique language to address these issues. While policies and activism often remain confined to their respective domains, art transcends boundaries, creating a space for empathy, dialogue, and reflection. With Who Owns the Water?, I aim to transform the abstract into the personal, compelling viewers to reconsider their role in preserving this essential resource.

Who Owns the Air? is a new addition in the series, which got its inspiration in the landscape here and found its perfect natural material of sweet gum seed. I am crossing fingers that I finish it!

SC: What you’re saying reminds me of something I read in Sharlene Khan’s essay, where she writes about the relationship between material and imagination in your work. I think she was referring to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who, from what I understand, proposes using imagination as a material practice; as a strategic instrument to fight abstract concepts which mean little to the everyday lives of people. I wanted to ask about this relationship in your work. It’s evident in Sediment, but it’s the same with the seeds that you’re using at NIROX for Who Owns the Air? How are you thinking about the material, and the meanings that such materials carry?

VG: I’ve always believed that natural materials hold stories — stories of a place, of migration, of transformation — and I like to use them conceptually to spark those narratives. The seeds I’m working with at NIROX, for instance, are from the sweet gum tree, originally from North America. They were brought here, planted, and over time, have altered the ecology of the land.

The imaginative aspect is deeply tied to that history. Think about it: someone made the decision to bring these seeds here, to plant these trees, perhaps out of curiosity or a desire for beauty, but without fully understanding how they would affect the land’s ecosystem. It’s a pattern we see repeated again and again, where human intervention, even with good intentions, disrupts the natural balance.

Today, we have science to reveal the consequences of such actions. We know better, but has that actually changed how we behave? That’s a question I always explore. When I found these seeds — prickly, small, and strangely beautiful — they became a perfect metaphor. They carry the story of movement, of unintended impact, of interconnectedness, and, ultimately, of our relationship with nature.

For me, the material is never just material; it’s alive with meaning. It holds within it layers of history, imagination, and consequence. By working with these seeds, I invite people to think about all the systems and decisions — seen and unseen — that shape the world we live in. It’s about engaging with those stories, and maybe, through that engagement, imagining a different kind of relationship with the natural world.

SC: Ghungroos is a recurring material in your work. You often use them accumulatively — the same material, ad infinitum, to build something up.

VG: That’s true, ghungroos are a recurring material for me, and they’re deeply symbolic. Their origins are actually tied to seeds, which I find fascinating. Before people learned to work with metal and casting, seeds were often used as ornaments or to make sound. Across the world, you’ll find indigenous communities who still wear seeds, not just as adornments but as a way to announce their presence in a space. That’s essentially where ghungroos, or ankle trinkets, were born.

In Indian classical dance, ghungroos create a rhythm, a peculiar and beautiful sound that adds to the performance. But in my work, they’re intentionally silent. This silence isn’t accidental — it’s deliberate. It represents all the issues that remain unheard or ignored, particularly environmental concerns, which often seem to be the last priority for governments and policymakers.

Ghungroos are also a visually striking material, and I love their versatility. My process with them often involves construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction. There’s a meditative repetition to sewing them bead by bead, and this act becomes a metaphor for persistence and care.

At the same time, they also serve as a subtle commentary on the art world’s obsession with permanence. Art collectors and institutions often look for works that will last, that are tangible and enduring. By working with ghungroos, I challenge that expectation — they’re fragile yet resilient, much like the environment itself. It’s a way of reminding people that beauty and meaning don’t always lie in permanence but in the process, the effort, and the stories embedded within the material.

SC: A work like Beehive (2006) does read like an intrusion, a gnawing presence; something that encroaches on the sanitariness of the white cube.

VG: That’s an interesting way to put it. Beehive was actually the first work I made that directly addressed the environment. At the time, I was researching Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), the mysterious disease wiping out bees. Even now, there are no definitive answers as to why it happens. Around the same time, I started reflecting on cities like Delhi — these sprawling, chaotic urban landscapes that, in many ways, resemble massive, artificial beehives.

I was thinking about it in two ways: first, how we’ve replaced the natural habitats of so many species, and yet nature, in its resilience, has a way of reclaiming what’s been lost. That’s the cyclical nature of life—the Earth will continue to exist, with or without us. It’s really up to us to decide how we want to coexist with it, but today it feels like we’re in a race we don’t even fully understand. Everything is accelerating: environmental collapse, capitalist expansion, the war machine — all these forces are converging in ways that feel overwhelming.

This work emerged during what I call “the age of I don’t know.” It’s an age where we have no clear answers. Nobody knows how to truly fix things — not governments, not the UN, not even us as individuals. Instead, we’re caught in this loop, repeating ourselves or reappropriating what’s already been done, hoping for a breakthrough.

Beehive is a reflection of that uncertainty but also of the inevitability of nature reclaiming its space. It’s a reminder that the Earth will endure, but what we’re seeing — these massive hurricanes, earthquakes, and ecological disasters — feels like the planet forcing us to stop, pause, and reflect. Whether we’ll listen or not, though, is the real question.

SC: Speaking of things being re-appropriated, could you talk about your use of rubble, as a material, in Future Fables (2024–ongoing) — something that’s of our making, of the built environment, that’s become defunct, neglected, reconstituted?

VG: Rubble is such a significant material because it encapsulates so many of our contemporary crises — wars, climate change, and the rapid, often reckless urbanisation that we are witnessing, especially in places like India and South Africa. In developing countries, there’s this relentless push to modernise, to build bigger, shinier cities. Old structures are being torn down to make way for new ones, and with that comes this mountain of debris, this endless byproduct of our ambition.

The population is growing, the cities are sprawling, and our unchecked greed fuels these concrete jungles. But the irony is glaring: we’re creating environments that are unsustainable, both for us and for the planet. It’s one thing to build, but cleaning up this mess — this debris — is going to be one of the defining challenges of our future.

That’s the idea behind Future Fables: to confront people with this reality. I wanted to create a monument to this waste— something unapologetically visible, something that forces people to react. This rubble, this discarded material, is a mirror of what we’ve done, a reminder of the scale of destruction we’ve normalised.

Not everyone will connect with it in the same way, and that’s fine. Some people will get it immediately; others might not. But alongside the rubble, there’s also a sound piece in the work that takes the audience on a journey, immersing them in the broader narrative.

It’s all connected — wars, for instance, are essentially money-making machines. They devastate, they displace, and yet they fuel the same systems that drive this cycle of waste. We need to start recognising these patterns and, more importantly, acting collectively to disrupt them. That’s the hope with Future Fables: to make people pause, reflect, and realise that the stories of the future will be written in the remnants of our choices today.

SC: Sometime between November and December 2023, people were talking about how long it would take to clear the amount of rubble created by the Israeli bombing of Gaza; that it would take decades to process. That was back then. I also know that concrete today forms something of a second skin, like a scab, across the globe. 

VG: Absolutely, and that's the issue—concrete isn't just a material; it's a symbol of our unsustainable growth. Whether it’s from war or urban expansion, this concrete pollution has serious consequences. The debris isn’t just an eyesore; it carries health risks for those who clean it, causing respiratory problems and long-term damage. Concrete has become a second skin, a permanent layer that cloaks our world and reflects the environmental and social costs of our relentless building. We need to rethink our approach, as it's more than just construction; it’s a crisis that affects our health, environment, and future.

SC: Can you talk about some of the decisions that went into Future Fables, like the decision to have either four or six cubic variations, in terms of scale? 

VG: That decision was driven by practical and technical considerations. I envisioned a round, continuous form, but when I discussed it with my structural engineer, we realised that constructing it that way wouldn't be feasible without additional cutting and modification. So, we opted for six shapes, which were essential for distributing the weight evenly. The project is heavy, and ensuring the structural integrity was key, so the engineers made that choice to balance the load and make the installation stable. 

SC: But there are so many different ways that the work could have materialised, you know? It could have been a tall column, for example. The space that you created feels like a sanctuary. It makes me think of another artist, Coral Bijoux, and her Silence as a Room, in Richmond — a demarcated space where one steps out of something into something else...

VG: Yes, there were many directions Future Fables could have taken, but I wanted to create an immersive space that felt almost like a sanctuary. The idea was to build a monument from our own waste, a reminder of the mountains of rubbish we create — whether from kitchens or industry — that now loom around our cities. This is not just an Indian issue; it's a global one. In Delhi, for instance, these piles of trash have become like artificial landscapes. Attempts are even being made to make them green spaces. It’s possible that a temple will emerge there in the future. I wanted Future Fables to be a space where people could enter, reflect, and meditate on the past, the present, and the path we're heading towards. It’s a grotesque structure, but within it, are the words to melt away, telling the story of the rubble and inviting people to experience that narrative in an intimate way.

SC: Can you say more about the sound piece?

VG: Exactly. It reads: 

In the contest of chaos, where nature weeps, a tale of debris, in silence it seeps. Climatic disasters, with fury they roar, Leaving a trail of destruction, on every shore. Wars waged with anger, a relentless fight, cities were reduced to rubble, swallowed by night. Debris of dreams, shattered and torn, In the aftermath, a world forlorn. Mountains of trash, an unsightly mound, consuming the Earth, like a relentless hound. Plastic seas and polluted air, a legacy of neglect, we’re forced to bear. 

The sound piece is meant to be an immersive experience, something that draws people into the gravity of the situation we’re in. It's a reminder of how intertwined we are with the consequences of our choices — choices that extend far beyond the immediate and touch on the survival of future generations. The words are poetic, almost like an elegy for the world we’re shaping. The piece aims to confront listeners with the relentless reality of environmental destruction, the aftermath of conflict, and the cumulative effects of human negligence. Yet, it also aims to resonate with that deep human impulse for hope and resilience. Even amidst despair, there’s a reminder that change is possible — if we choose to face it.