‘Celebrating Crop Diversity’: Pune to host India’s debut in global botanical art exhibition project

In India, the exhibition will be held in Pune’s Rupa Rahul Bajaj Centre for Environment and Art (RRBCEA) in partnership with the Indian Botanical Art Society, running from May 17 to May 24 to coincide with Worldwide Day of Botanical Art on May 18.

The exhibition in Pune will showcase 32 works by 18 artists from India and Sri Lanka.

“The exhibition will be officially held on May 18, with each country deciding how many more days they want to extend it and what other programmes they would like to host.

At RRBCEA, we are hosting the exhibition from May 17 to 24. Apart from the exhibition, there will be workshops, demonstrations, and talks,” says Dr Dhanashree Paranjpe, head of RRBCEA.

Highlighting the importance of botanical art, Prerna Gupta, an artist from Kanpur, says, “If I am a watercolour artist doing a painting of an apple, I would focus on the beauty of the apple or what emotions it inspires in me. But, if I am a botanical artist, I would adhere to a more scientific accuracy, focusing on shape, colour, form, and botanical details. If I am showing a dissection of the apple, I am going to show exactly how many seeds it has, if there are any distinguishing features, and which variety of apple it is.”

Gupta, who began to create botanical art during Covid, is exhibiting works showing the wild Himalayan pomegranate and the ivy gourd, which is known as ‘tendu’ in Marathi.

“Commercial pomegranate varieties often get a bacterial blight, so scientists decided to solve it by crossing them with the wild Himalayan pomegranate. This resulted in a new, more bacteria-resistant variety. Through my artwork, I want to show how important it is to conserve wild varieties because they are gene banks. At the moment, we may not know their importance as there are a lot of things still waiting to be discovered,” explains Gupta.

Her work on the ivy gourd, which is widely eaten across India but also grows wild and is consumed by tribal communities, is an attempt to highlight wild plants that can provide us with nutritional support, and it is important to conserve them.

Sri Lankan artist Maria Abeyesekere says her botanical art is “a reflection of my deep connection with nature”.

She captures the essence of local plant species through her plein air botanical artworks. Her passion for botanical art not only showcases the beauty of her surroundings but also serves as a celebration of the rich flora that surrounds her every day.

This is the second Botanical Art Worldwide Project and the works fall under categories, such as Heritage Crops, featuring crops that are not used in modern, large-scale monoculture agriculture; Crop Wild Relatives, about plants that can be hybridised with cultivated crops to impart a new characteristic to the cultivated crop, or that are foraged wild plants; and ancient crops that have been cultivated for hundreds or thousands of years in the same form.

“The exhibition will help create awareness around crop diversity that India has to offer, but in an artistic way. The artists, being from all over India, have tried to find unique or different crops in their region that they can represent through their art. So, in Pune, even if we don’t see these varieties, we will be able to see them through this botanical art exhibition. We will be aware that such beautiful varieties of crops exist in India and wonder why we don’t explore or know about them,” says Paranjpe.