Inheritors of Earth, curated by Premjish Achari, invites viewers into the relational world of plants, entities long treated as backdrop, resource, or specimen rather than co-inhabitants of the earth. The title draws on Vaikom Muhammad Basheer’s Bhumiyude Avakashikal, envisioning humans, flora and fauna as equal co-custodians of the planet, and on ecological activist Kallen Pokkudan, whose mangrove-planting work fused Dalit history with ecological repair.

Through paintings, photographs, installations and video, artists here practice a “phytosensitive” approach: encountering rather than merely representing plants, tracing colonial botanical migrations, and honoring uncredited lower-caste knowledge-keepers erased from scientific archives.

Rejecting both extraction and exoticism, the exhibition asks viewers to look with plants, not just at them, moving from usefulness and utility toward humility, kinship, and coexistence—imagining a future shaped by plant life on its own terms.

The exhibition is proud to host a set of artworks from the Shared Ecologies archive as part of an extended reading room. Ben Goldfarb has designed a special soundscape for the exhibition. Independent curator and researcher Oorja Garg and IMPULSE Magazine, New York are leading a special reading group for the duration of the exhibition.