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The Hindu

Visual lesson from design professor

When assistant professor of Interior design and decor, Karthiga T from JBAS College for Women went out on an early morning ride to Marina beach at the end of last year, to catch the sunrise, what greeted her was a shoreline littered with plastic waste — bags, large water cans, abandoned slippers, mosquito bats, and other debris tossed ashore. Deeply disturbed by what she saw, this Velachery resident felt compelled to turn her emotion into action. 'This is when I decided to take this issue to a wider audience, but through the language of art. We need to keep the conversation going, one way or another,' says Karthiga. She later incorporated this into her PhD research project after receiving ethical clearance to collect coastal waste and transform it into art, which marked the beginning of her mural art, 'Coastal Cry in Plastic'. 'While my artwork used only plastic waste, our aim at the end of the day, was to clean the beach. Together with my students from JBAS, we collected all forms of coastal debris from Marina and Besant Nagar beach over a span of 30 days,' she explains. After spending another month sorting through the collected waste, separating plastics, and sending the rest for recycling, Karthiga began working on her mural artwork from home. Between parenting her toddler and teaching at college, she used whatever spare time she had — often on her terrace to bring the piece alive. The artwork is a statue of a pregnant woman form which has around 20 kilograms of plastic waste. 'I wanted it to be a commentary on environmental degradation,' says Karthiga. 'The mural work is constructed entirely from coastal waste which we collected where I mainly used plastic bottles, bags, caps, wires, and discarded containers. I wanted viewers to reflect on their own consumption and disposal habits, and think about the sustainable practises of these discarded items through the mural art,' says the interior decor professor, who used eco-friendly paints. 'This pregnant female figure is a metaphor for Mother Earth, carrying the weight of our waste,' she adds. Recently, in April, the mural was installed at the Government College of Fine Arts, Chennai. 'The mural now sits in a space surrounded by artists,' Karthiga says. 'I hope to create conversations and inspire more artists to choose sustainable practices in their work.'