Never Was a Shade, a group show curated by Prajna Desai opened at 14th May, 2026 at Project 88, Mumbai, India. Three works: Dangling Dews, Finding Kalpavriksha, and Epistemic Fruit   were on show at the exhibition. 

The works in the exhibition are part of an ongoing project, ‘Crackle of an Undying Log’. The project brings together ecology, mythology and technology, spanning across moving images, holograms, installations and photographs. It thinks about the kalpavriksha, a magical wish granting tree in the Indian cosmology; which only fulfils wishes of the pure hearted- situating the moral deeply in the information and ecological landscape. It opens up how we think of archives, information, extraction and morality in relationship to wider systems of ecology. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

         

 

 

 

Dangling Dews

Dangling Dews is a single channel video, compiling three anecdotes around resinous archives, a burnt mythical eye, and an undying log which keeps crackling. The work positions the tree as technology of enlightenment that span across mythical, industrial and ecological conditions.

 

   

 

 

Epistemic Fruit 

Epistemic Fruit is a photographic print, thinking around the forbidden fruit present in different mythological systems. Here, the consumption of fruit doesn’t grant knowledge- but reveals templates and systems which shape knowledge. 

 

 

 

Finding Kalpavriksha

Finding Kalpavriksha is a single channel video, using a depth sensor to map the ever changing shape of mythical kalpavriksha; The tree, becomes a harborer of liquid histories and archives which exist outside human linearity- morphing constantly as the sensor attempts to map it.