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BUGS! We're All Connected is a unique exhibition featuring 15 Indian artists who explore the often-overlooked world of insects through new artworks. With tactile designs, a custom musical score, and limited-edition prints, the exhibition invites viewers to find insects not pretty, but fascinating, emphasizing their vital role in Earth's ecosystems.
As a kid, I used to eat ants. Depending on which culture you're from, that might be concerning, and my mother certainly was concerned. She would make me gargle incessantly and brush my teeth until all I could taste was a cocktail of mouthwash and toothpaste. I don't know why I wanted to eat them. I think it was curiosity: what was this tiny organism, really?
Nobody had taught me much about the insect world, certainly not in school. We learnt about mammals the most, then a little about amphibians, and a chapter here and there on reptiles. Insects barely got a mention. And now, obviously, I know why.
We give our attention, and our textbook pages, to the things we find beautiful or relatable. A tiger or an elephant is easy to love, so it earns a full chapter and a place in our imagination. Even while the internet campaigns and worries for Punch the monkey or Moo Deng the hippo, it's because these animals are aesthetically ‘cute’. An ant has none of that. It is small, fast, and everywhere, and we have learnt to see it as a nuisance rather than a subject worth studying. Yet insects are, by almost any measure, the dominant animals on Earth. They pollinate our crops, break down waste, and hold entire food chains together.
So what happens when we finally decide to stop and look?
That is the question at the heart of BUGS! We're All Connected, an exhibition that brings together 15 visual artists from across India, each creating a new artwork inspired by the often-overlooked world of insects. From bees to beetles and how we interact with the insect world.
The artists come from Kolkata, Nagpur, Jaipur and beyond, and each brings a distinct perspective to the theme. Some of the artists featured in the exhibition are Gautami Reddy, Akshata Sinha, Anwesh Sahoo and more. Every piece has been created exclusively for BUGS!, which makes the exhibition the first public unveiling of 15 new interpretations of the same idea. Each work will be released as a limited-edition print of 20, signed and numbered by the artist, so these are editions meant to be collected and lived with, not just glanced at on a gallery wall.
An original musical score by Rohan Kale (Prismer) and Udai Sharma (Maddeof) will run throughout BUGS!, giving the show its own sonic environment. It was made capturing the different sounds and worlds you can hear out in nature: rainfall, footsteps on the grass, the omnipresent sound of crickets, transforming the exhibition into a garden.
Curated by Shreya Josh, the exhibition is designed to be tactile. Even the flyer designed for it, is handmade and physical. And it might be odd to have a handmade flyer that almost looks like the invitations cards I used to make when I was younger, colourful, extremely imperfect but brimming with personality. Made by using BlowPens, The flyer immediately shows the element of play evident in the whole exhibition.
The most striking part of the exhibition is that it does not ask us to find insects pretty. It asks us to find them interesting, which is a different and much harder request. Keeping our curiosity still ignited can feel extremely difficult considering our answers to everything are ever present.
The core of the exhibition remains a simple and strange fac: ‘that all of us are here, on the same planet, at the same time.
'BUGS! We're All Connected' is on view from 3rd to 11th October at Shacoco, Shahpur Jat in New Delhi from 10 am to 7pm. It is open to all and free for all.
