Painter and video artist Ranbir Kaleka's immersive three-screen video installation, The House of Opaque Water was inspired by environmentalist Pradip Saha's documentary about the islands of the Sundarbans Delta in the south of the Great Plains, which have been subject to accelerating and massive erosion over the years, dispacing thousands of inhabitants. The story of Sheikh Lal Mohan, a humble man whose home and entire island were entirely lost to the waters serves as a narrative thread through the haunting, at times turbulent stream of images that reflect the inner lives of the villagers whose way of life has been destroyed by the very rivers they depend on for daily subsistence. While based on documented facts, Kaleka's exploration of ecological challenges in the face of economic and sociopolitical instability uses the visual language of the symbolic and visionary. The threatened landscape is indicated by a variety of forms, ranging from the primitive, powerful lines of mud drawings, to the computer-generated imagery of Google Maps. We are reminded how time and space are out of joint by the sight of fish stranded on grassland, or ordinary objects unmoored from their domestic setting floating underwater, or the vision of a flaming effigy on a boat in water. Yet at the same time, we see how villagers try to maintain elements of their daily life in the context of great disaster. The atmospheric soundtrack, which layers voices, sputtering motors, dirge-like bells and solemn foghorns, unifies the mundane and the mythic, lending an urgent gravitas to these stories of loss and change.
