Entitled Resurrection, my site-specific installation stemmed out of my experiences just before and during the time spent at SoilBite. Resurrection, recuperation and rejuvenation seemed to be the ‘theme’of my existence at that point in time.

The SoilBite workshop was located in Tarumitra, a 10-acre bio-reserve that was created as a nodal resource centre for the “rejuvenation” of the earth by Fr. Robert Athickal and his students. Personally, I was just recovering from a debilitating slip-disc attack. Politically, with the Nitish Kumar Government having just come into power in the state of Bihar, there was much speculation about how the change of guard would “breathe new life” into the flagging social and political life of the state. During
our stay, we visited Nalanda, the ancient centre of higher learning in Bihar, where again there was talk of reinstating the past glory of the university by developing a world class university on the pattern of the ancient one according to the vision of the previous president, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.

At Tarumitra, in the central garden where we met every day, stood a teak pole which Fr. Robert called the axis mun di – the cosmic axis – the centre of the world. A cyclone had recently uprooted a few of the teak trees in the garden. I decided to recycle the trunks with the help of a local blacksmith and a carpenter. The trunk was cut up into cylinders and rejoined with iron pegs recreating a huge spinal column, battered but bolstered to stand up right again.
The fallen tree was ‘resurrected’ to create a reciprocal companion to the axis mundi in the garden.