Kulpreet Singh Extinction Archive Art and Extinction
Kulpreet Singh Extinction Archive: Climate Crisis Through Art explores the growing crisis of biodiversity loss through a powerful installation at India Art Fair. Using rice paper, pesticide stains and endangered species, the artwork transforms extinction into a haunting visual archive.
In the video featured by KNMA, artist Kulpreet Singh introduces his artwork Extinction Archive by saying, “When I was a child, I used to see vultures. Suddenly, they disappeared.” He explains that not only birds but also rivers, trees, and plants have vanished from our surroundings.
The installation uses square panels of rice paper, laser-cut dots, and stubble-burning ash to represent the disappearance of animals and ecosystems. Through these materials, the artwork quietly communicates the fear and reality of extinction.
Speaking to PTI, Singh says, “It is not just an archive of extinct species; it is an archive of how we are still ruining things for everyone.” Curated by Srinivas Aditya Mopidevi, the installation is displayed in the outdoor section of the India Art Fair.
Singh’s panels feature several endangered and extinct species drawn from the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species. These include the harvestman species Hirstienus nanus, the white blotched shrub frog, the land snail Carelia mirabilis, the Mauritian giant skink, and the angled flat top snail.
Kulpreet Singh Extinction Archive Art and Extinction
Kulpreet Singh Extinction Archieve Extinction is a frightening concept nowadays. In an era of climate change, a time when environmental exploitation has become the ‘new normal’, Extinction is something that instils fear, and it should be understood as a cultural trauma—that is, species, rivers, animals disappear, but their traces linger as haunting reminders. In the book The Mind in the Cave, South African archaeologist David Lewis-Williams notes that cave art also reveals narratives of Extinction. Later, many animals that had disappeared have appeared in the cave paintings. Extinction is imprinted in the art of ancient worlds; for example, species such as the cave bear and the woolly mammoth, which appear in parietal art, are now extinct.
Art (whether writing, painting, or sculpture) is a document of one era meant for another, in the sense that it marks a particular time. Over time, it can turn into something like an extinction diary. Many creatures that once lived but later disappeared, including dinosaurs, have returned to popular imagination. Movies like Jurassic Park celebrate the return of creatures that have vanished from the Earth.
Extinction as Cultural Memory
Here is a quote from W.J.T. Mitchell in the book ‘Animals, Plants, and Afterimages: The Art and Science of Representing Extinction’: ‘Hundreds of species are disappearing from the planet every day, and it is no longer possible to deny that human beings may be the first species in the cosmos to bring on its own extinction.’
Mitchell points out that two things are essential, and that this issue requires urgent attention. Many animals, just like humans, die every day. Just as many human deaths could have been prevented if we had paid attention, the deaths of many animals and birds are similar. But Extinction is beyond daily deaths. It is destruction, an irreversible journey. We cannot simply witness a river, a bird, plants, or species disappear forever. Such a great disaster is here, along with many wonders that we experience.
Following the above statement, the Mitchell Extinction Archive project (not this exhibition) is explained in detail and also criticised. The project can bring something into a new environment, an exhibition. It does not restore the creature to life. Instead, it turns it into exhibition material.
Mitchell says, “It is a rescue operation only of images.” At the same time, he treats the project as both a critique and an inquiry into the idea of an exhibition. He argues that there is no attempt to return the creatures to the habitat that made them possible.
Mitchell also describes the archive as a melancholy reminder that the represented creatures are disappearing or have already vanished. The project preserves memory through images rather than restoring lost ecosystems.
Human Responsibility and Extinction
Friedrich Nietzsche says, ‘If you kill a cockroach, you are a hero; if you kill a butterfly, you are evil. Morals have aesthetic criteria.’ We often witness Extinction in systems that divide us into categories. Extinction can happen at either boundary of these categories. It’s not just the butterfly that can become extinct; a cockroach could be wiped out as well. Categorisation is like giving someone a license to treat ‘one’ however they want. If a category disappears, the only consequence is that the hierarchical order that included it will change, but nothing else happens.
This is where some arguments in Anne-Sophie Miclo’s article ‘Three Variations on the Theme of Extinction’ become relevant. In the exhibition, Miclo categorises extinction into three categories: extinct species, critically endangered species, and species (including humans) that might be responsible for extinction. Kulpreet Singh’s exhibition archive represents these categories.
Humans responsible for extinction are not directly shown in the exhibition. Instead, the artwork encourages viewers to reflect on their own role. The artist holds a mirror to society and reminds us that our actions shape the future of the natural world.
Natural and Human-Caused Extinction
It cannot be said that humans are responsible for all kinds of Extinction. Natural extinctions also occur, as evidenced by the depictions of animals in cave art that indicate past extinctions. However, many of the extinctions reflected in Kulpreet Singh’s artworks are artificial and result from humans being at the centre. The term ‘anthropocentric’ does not merely mean placing humans at the centre of everything; rather, it signifies establishing dominance. This is where Heidegger’s idea of ‘being in the world’ becomes relevant. In other words, issues such as Extinction can be approached in this way. This perspective can address the topic by embodying the idea that humans are not the centre of the world but, at some point, just one among many living beings.
The artist states, without a trace of doubt, that Extinction is a grave issue that requires special attention. The fact is that the Earth’s surface has turned into an area of human-caused destruction. When some species disappear from the food chain, unexpected changes occur. Here, these are representations, representations of absence.
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