Apocalyptic Urbanscapes: Gigi Scaria's Multimedia Visions of Displacement, Ecological Devastation and Reimagined Habitats

 Gigi Scaria is an acclaimed Indian artist whose multidisciplinary practice has spanned a diverse

range of mediums including painting, photography, sculpture, installation and video art over the

past two decades. While his early career began with representational painting, Scaria quickly

gravitated towards an experimental approach that allowed him to transcend the boundaries of

individual artistic disciplines.

At the core of Scaria's artistic explorations are profound inquiries into the phenomena of

urbanisation, migration, displacement and more recently, the environmental crisis. Drawing

inspiration from his own experiences of moving from a small village in Kerala to the bustling

metropolis of Delhi, Scaria's works interrogate the intended and unintended consequences of

rapid urban development. His oeuvre provides searing artistic commentary on the alienation,

chaos and rigid social hierarchies that arise from unchecked expansion of Indian cities driven by

policies prioritising growth over sustainability. In that sense, his vision is a poetic synthesis of

contrasting modalities - the real and the imagined, the documentary and the speculative. His

mixed media works merge aspects of detailed ethnographic study with fantastical elements and

imaginative futurism. This interweaving of the empirical and the conceptual imbues his art with

a haunting quality that prompts viewers to re-evaluate their relationships with the built

environments they inhabit.

Scaria's investigations into urban topographies manifest through a unique visual language that

poetically blends elements of documentary realism with imaginative, speculative futurism.

Labyrinthine cityscapes crafted from mixed media installations, monumental sculptures, and

photo-murals evoke both a visceral familiarity and an unsettling sense of the unfamiliar. His

provocative deployment of pastel hues creates an aesthetic dissonance, with apocalyptic and

dystopian visions rendered in colours typically associated with serenity.

In recent years, Scaria has expanded his thematic inquiries to confront the escalating climate

crisis and environmental devastation arising from humanity's strained relationship with nature.

His artworks envision post-human landscapes, urban ruins overrun by resurgent flora and fauna,

prompting contemplation about the precariousness of contemporary civilization's ecological

footprint. Scaria's multimedia practice thus serves as a profound artistic commentary on the rapid

urban development in India while also issuing urgent warnings about the socio-environmental

consequences of unrestrained "progress" detached from sustainable models.

Gigi Scaria's artistic vision is characterised by a masterful ability to render the familiar urban

environment in paradoxically surreal, dystopian and apocalyptic ways. His mixed-media

cityscapes are unmistakably rooted in the realities of India's metropolitan landscapes, with

architectures and elements that evoke a visceral sense of recognition. And yet, Scaria subverts

this familiarity through unsettling aesthetic choices that jolt the viewer out of complacency.

One of the most striking aspects of Scaria's works is his distinctive use of pastel color palettes.

Gentle pinks, soothing blues, and dusty mauves imbue his art with an initial sense of serenity and

calm. However, this deployment of soft hues is a sophisticated subversion - Scaria wields pastel

shades to depict bleak, dystopian and even violently apocalyptic visions of urban devastation.

The visual dissonance created is profoundly impactful, imparting a haunting sense of desolation.

The usage of pastels in an art-ecological context doesn’t start and stop with Scaria. For the 15th

edition of India Art Fair, Thukral and Tagra designed and created the tents for the fair as a part of

their “Digital Arboretum” series, where they explore the concept of an arboretum (a place where

trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants are cultivated for scientific and educational purposes) and

how it can be recreated in a digital plane for an increasingly digital world. The Digital

Arboretum series also uses a pastel palette to depict its subject, with the tents themselves being

upcycled into tote bags by Chamar Studios.

What makes T&T’s installation of the tent and their Digital Arboretum more pertinent to our

discussion is the fact that the tents were directly opposite to Scaria’s “Elevator to the

Subcontinent”. Talking about how the artist perceived the city as hostile, claustrophobic, and

unwelcoming, the immersive series of projections were in dialogue with the Arboretum: how one

may be able to find refuge from the chaotic, overwhelming, overstimulating cityscape in the

digital world, all from the comfort of their cramped studio apartment.

Gigi Scaria's poignant artistic depictions of urbanization's turmoil are grounded in his own lived

experiences of moving from a village in Kerala to the dense metropolis of Delhi. This pivotal

geographic and cultural transition exposed him firsthand to the jarring realities of displacement,

alienation, and the chaotic social upheavals underlying India's rapidly expanding urban centres.

Scaria's mixed-media cityscapes don't simply render the physical architectures of Indian cities,

but rather capture the psycho-social experiences of their inhabitants. His labyrinthine sculptural

installations and disorienting visual perspectives convey the overpowering sense of uprootedness

felt by rural-urban migrants. The fragmented, recombinant geometries mirror the loss of spatial

and cultural moorings. And his haunting, depopulated landscapes speak to profound human

alienation and atomization within urban environments governed by ruthless social hierarchies.

His aesthetic approach renders the known unknown, the mundane extraordinary. The taxi-stands,

construction sites, tangled cables and high-rises so omnipresent in India's cities undergo an eerie

metamorphosis under his treatment. Familiar elements are distorted, fragmented and recombined

into unsettling, labyrinthine architectures that seem to exist in a parallel reality at once

recognizable yet alien.

At its core, Scaria's oeuvre serves as an artistic critique of the neoliberal urban development

paradigms driving chaotic growth across India's cities. His works indict policy agendas

singularly focused on real estate and infrastructure expansion, rather than holistic approaches

centred on sustainability, equity and inclusive housing for all socioeconomic strata. The

apocalyptic aesthetics highlight how such myopic policies, if unrestrained, could render our

cities uninhabitable - environmentally ravaged and devoid of social fabric.

Scaria is part of a lineage of influential Indian artists grappling with urban themes and realities

through their practice. Like Subodh Gupta's commentaries on the motor-force of mass

production, or Bharti Kher's evocations of urban displacement and migration, Scaria too probes

the human costs underlying rapid urbanisation. His works find kinship with Ayesha Singh's

examinations of urban marginalities, Karan Shrestha's mappings of geographic power structures,

and Sudipta Das's explorations of neo-nomadism amidst inhospitable cityscapes.

The geometric patterns and predictability resonate with Singh’s sculptures of singularly lined

obsidian, and indeed realise themselves in Singh’s charcoal sketches where she depicts layers

upon layers of heritage architectural features collapsing in on themselves, creating an achar of

concrete, without any signs of life, and yet in constant motion. Mercurial, changing. This is also

what I feel is missing from Scaria’s work. While he does work with the ideas of the Indian

metropolitan and places where he has lived, his paintings fail to reflect that in the architectural

features, instead opting to focus on box-like buildings - cubes and cuboids - rather than attuning

a personality of history and mystery to the long abandoned buildings. This blandness in design

can be purposeful, yes, but lacks that desi context the likes of which Sreshtha and Singh bring in

their works with minute details, or with magnifying a singular detail to monumental proportions.

While diverse in chosen media, this constellation of artists shares Scaria's vital role in sparking

public discourse around the socio-cultural impacts of unsustainable urban development policies

in India. Their artistic voices collectively amplify the call for an urbanisation paradigm centred

on environmental justice, cultural preservation and an ethical utopian vision of inclusive

cityscapes.

While Gigi Scaria's earlier practice was centred on investigating the human experiences and

socio-cultural impacts of rapid urbanisation in India, his recent artistic trajectory has pivoted

towards probing the escalating environmental crisis and climate change through a profoundly

unsettling lens.

Scaria's latest works imagine a post-human world - urban landscapes rendered as apocalyptic

ruins, devoid of human inhabitation but overtaken by an omnipresent, resurgent nature. His

large-scale sculptural installations and photo-compositions depict once-thriving cityscapes

reduced to abandoned concrete labyrinths, their towering edifices shrouded by dense overgrowth

of vines, plant-life and vegetation reclaiming territory.

In this chilling artistic vision, the material vestiges of contemporary human civilization - the very

architectural embodiments of urbanisation's totalizing impacts - lie conquered by the

overwhelming forces of the natural world. Scaria's abandoned cities serve as apocalyptic

cautionary tales about the ultimate fragility of human endeavours when pushed into terminal

conflict with the planet's ecosystems.

At its core, this recent shift in Scaria's oeuvre is an attempt to scrutinise humanity's strained,

imbalanced relationship with the natural environment that sustains us. His artworks don't just

depict environmental devastation, but prod deeper - investigating how contemporary societies'

hubris, overconsumption, and alienation from nature has precipitated vast ecological unravelling

with existential ramifications.

Scaria is part of a growing cohort of contemporary Indian artists like Asim Waqif, Vibha

Galhotra, Pors & Ra, and Anu Yadav who have turned their creative attention towards the

climate crisis and ecological themes. Much like his peers, Scaria harnesses the evocative power

of visual metaphor to jolt viewers into contemplating our unsustainable collective trajectory as a

species.

This emerging movement in Indian art practice represents a vital ideological shift - a recognition

that environmental justice and preserving the natural world must become overarching societal

imperatives. Scaria's hauntingly rendered vacant urbanscapes embody this ultimatum, asking

whether the devastations he imagines will solidify into reality if more ethical, sustainable paths

forward remain uncharted.

Ultimately, Gigi Scaria's multidisciplinary oeuvre represents a powerful confluence of personal,

socio-political, and ecological concerns rendered through a singular, paradoxical aesthetic vision.

His bold experiments transcending artistic boundaries have charted new paths for contemporary

Indian art's engagement with the most vital issues facing rapidly urbanising societies.

Scaria's poetic ability to defamiliarize the familiar cityscape jolts viewers out of complacency,

prompting them to confront uncomfortable truths about migration, displacement, and the human

toll of unsustainable development policies. Simultaneously, his hauntingly rendered visions of

abandoned post-human ruins serve as an existential wake-up call about humanity's tenuous

relationship with the natural world.

More than just depictions of urban chaos or environmental devastation, Scaria's works

encompass the full tragic arc - providing searing indictments of the flawed ideological paradigms

that produced such outcomes, while also gesturing towards more ethical, equitable paths

forward. His art demands that viewers contemplate what an urbanised future honouring both

social justice and ecological preservation could look like.

By fluidly synthesising ethnographic documentation, conceptual speculation, and utterly unique

aesthetics, Scaria has crafted a singular voice within the landscape of contemporary Indian art.

His creative interdisciplinarity represents a vital evolution - one where artists are unconstrained

by medium-based limitations in their drives to grapple with complex societal forces shaping the

modern human condition.

As India's urbanisation juggernaut hurtles forward, propelled by largely unexamined neoliberal

precepts, Scaria's cautionary oeuvre stands as an indispensable reminder about whose lives and

what fragile ecologies are being jeopardised by relentless "progress." His works flame the

imagination, envisioning more equitable, sustainable trajectories that remain eminently possible

if only we can shift collective ideological course. Scaria's labyrinthine cityscapes prompt the

vital question - will we remain ensnared in alienating urban dystopias, or can we manifest more

holistic, radically reimagined human habitats?

Works Cited

Scaria, G. (n.d.). Gigi Scaria. https://www.gigiscaria.in/index.php

 

Gallery Chemould (2009, December 11). Amusement park - Gigi Scaria.

https://www.gallerychemould.com/exhibitions/68-amusement-park-gigi-scaria/

Vadehra Art Gallery (n.d.). Gigi Scaria. https://www.vadehraart.com/artists/66-gigi-scaria/

Gallery Chemould (n.d.). Gigi Scaria. https://www.gallerychemould.com/artists/58-gigi-scaria/

AICON Contemporary (n.d.). Gigi Scaria - Featured works.

https://www.aiconcontemporary.com/artists/gigi-scaria/featured-works?view=multiple-sliders#3

Ojas Art (n.d.). Gigi Scaria. https://ojasart.com/artists-cpt/gigi-scaria/

Smart Museum of Art (2013). Gigi Scaria: City unclaimed.

https://smartmuseum.uchicago.edu/exhibitions/gigi-scaria-city-unclaimed/

Architectural Digest India (2017, September 21). Art: Gigi Scaria's All About This Side at

AICON Gallery New York.

https://www.architecturaldigest.in/content/art-gigi-scarias-side-aicon-gallery-new-york/

Manoj, S. (2021, September 29). Into the artist's studio: A fluid space for Gigi Scaria's practice.

Mint.

https://lifestyle.livemint.com/relationships/it-s-complicated/artist-studio-contemporary-art-gigi-s

caria-111706418611556.html