Whose Land Is It Anyway?

Whose Land Is It Anyway?

आख़िर ये ज़मीन है किसकी?

हाथियों की? राजा-रानियों की, पूर्वजों की?
पेड़-पौधों की? देवी-देवताओं की?
या आप और हम जैसे आम लोगों की?

जिस तरह भेड़िये जगह-जगह पेशाब कर अपना क्षेत्र घोषित करते हैं,
कुछ वैसे ही इंसान भी सदियों से ज़मीन पर अपना हक़ जताने की कोशिश करता आया है।

Whose Land Is It Anyway? brings together the works of Nirbhay Raj Soni, Taslim Jamal Sonaa, and Himmat Gayri, three artists from Southern Rajasthan whose practices emerge from very different social and cultural worlds, yet remain deeply tied to the same landscape.

The exhibition looks at land not simply as scenery, but as something continuously occupied, worshipped, crossed, divided, and inherited. Kingdoms, communities, forests, ancestors, animals, and gods all leave their presence upon this region, only to eventually give way to something else.

Nirbhay Ji’s miniature paintings place elephants within the forests and terrains of Mewar, quietly releasing symbols of royalty and power back into the open landscape. Taslim’s paintings emerge from the rhythms of life in her village of Gahri, shaped by memory, ecology, seasonal rhythms, and community. Himmat’s works draw from vernacular faith systems where माताज) (life-giving mother form), राड़ाज) (guardian spirits), sacred trees, stones, snakes, and ancestors remain deeply embedded within the land itself.

Different people have known the same land in different ways, worshipped it differently, and lived upon it differently. As forests shrink, hills are quarried, towns expand, and older belief systems slowly disappear, the meaning of land itself continues to shift across the region.

The question still remains:
आख़िर ये ज़मीन है किसकी?

- Abhijeet Karwa