In one of the most talked-about installations at the sixth Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Delhi-based artist Niroj Satpathy transforms the overlooked detritus of urban life into a meditation on memory, labour, and the invisible rhythms of a city at night.
Titled Dhalan, the installation at S.M.S. Hall in Mattancherry is constructed entirely from materials sourced at Delhi’s landfill sites. The work draws directly from Satpathy’s five years as a night supervisor in Delhi’s municipal waste management department — an experience that gave him intimate access to the “waste mountains that awaken when the city sleeps.”
The Installation by Niroj Satpathy
The installation aligns with the Biennale’s overarching theme, “For the Time Being,” curated by artist Nikhil Chopra and HH Art Spaces. The contribution by Niroj Satpathy pushes that theme into urgent, material territory: the prolonged, uncertain present that discarded objects inhabit once they are separated from use and meaning.
“We exist in a prolonged present shaped by waste,” said Satpathy. “This installation holds objects in such a state of uncertainty — where they have neither a past nor a future, but exist only as remnants.”
About the artist
The Odisha-born artist is careful to distinguish his practice from conventional found-object art. He does not curate waste, he insists — he works within it, allowing discarded objects to find their way to him rather than the reverse. What interests him is not the object itself, but the abandoned state it occupies and the traces of identity, labour, and memory it still carries.
The result is an immersive, thought-provoking experience that functions almost as a historical document — one that weaves the biography of waste into the broader story of human existence in a rapidly urbanising world.
“Dhalan” presents a serious inquiry into the uncertainties and fleeting nature of contemporary life. Like a historical document, the installation interweaves the history of waste with huma existence, and has already become one of the most talked-about works at the Biennale.
The sixth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale concludes on March 31.
Athmaja Biju is the Editor at Abir Pothi. She is a Translator and Writer working on Visual Culture.
