272 Varieties of Indigenous Organic Rice Seeds

Amar Kanwar’s works of the past two decades has presented a profound interrogation of the politics of power, violence, and justice. His multilayered art installation The Sovereign Forest (2011–) emerges from the conflict in Odisha, India, between local communities, the government, and corporations. For more than a decade Kanwar has been filming the industrial interventions that have reshaped and permanently destroyed parts of the state’s landscape. Since the 1990s Odisha has been a battleground on issues of development and displacement, as national and international corporations have established large-scale mining and industrial sites in various parts of the traditionally agrarian state. The resulting conflicts between local communities, the government, and corporations over the control of agricultural lands, forests, rivers, and minerals have led to the forcible displacement of indigenous communities, farmers, and fisherfolk while engendering an ongoing regimen of violence that is often unpredictable and invisible.

The Sovereign Forest renders visible what has hitherto been hidden and suppressed within the site of this “modern war.” Engaging the viewer in manifold ways of seeing and comprehending, the work harnesses a set of propositions that investigate the notion of “poetry as evidence.” Kanwar’s films and the constellation of objects that accompany them orchestrate actual found and collected images, traces, records, fables, and personal stories in multiple vocabularies to surpass fact and reveal a richer, more fluid, and poetic perspective on reality and on the meaning of what is happening. The act of “seeing” in this case leads us to a deeper and more multidimensional comprehension of the relationship between life and politics, between the personal and the ungraspable implications of violence. The installation of 272 Varieties of Indigenous Organic Rice Seeds is part of The Sovereign Forest.

When Natabar Sarangi, a former schoolteacher recently turned rice farmer and seed activist, started cultivating rice a decade ago, he found only a handful of different seeds still in use in Odisha. He remembered all the various species of rice from his childhood, along with their shapes, tastes, and natural qualities. To preserve this rich heritage and to bring it back into the natural cycles of cultivation, he set out to collect, grow, harvest, disseminate, and archive the seeds. In The Sovereign Forest, 272 individual species of rice are represented, with each type of seed displayed in a handmade container, labeled, and archived with great care. Accompanying the seeds are five small books that compile texts and photographic evidence, which Kanwar gathered in the process of making The Sovereign Forest. They recount the manifold levels of resistance, not only against political and corporate violations but also against the loss of memory of the dead and disappeared and of the passage of time in the struggle to preserve, resist, and survive.