DHAN  "Call of the Soil"

 Installation  Artwork: Chiman Dangi 

Materials : 7 Brass Plates, 

Location: Art Junction Residency Udaipur 2024

This installation is a tribute to soil, memory, and labor. The red earth placed in brass plates is not mere clay—it symbolizes the toil of our ancestors, our deep-rooted bond with the land, and the cultural traditions that shaped us.

Nowadays, whenever people gather for weddings or festivals, conversations often revolve around wealth and extravagance—“He spent this much,” “She wore so much gold.” As the son of a farmer and an artist, I often listen silently... but within me, a different memory stirs.

I am taken back to my childhood, to the early mornings before Holi, when my mother and sisters Women in the neighborhood would go out to collect yellow or red clay. That soil, which was used to plaster our homes, was revered like jewelry. For us, that earth was true wealth—the same earth from which life grows, which turns to gold in a farmer’s hands.

This installation holds that memory alive.

It is the "Call of the Soil"—a symbolic and emotional reflection on what true wealth means. It reminds us that the land is not just a resource, but something worthy of gratitude and respect.

It asks: is wealth only money, or also the very soil that gives us life?

With time, the value of things changes—

but have we forgotten the worth of soil?

 

 The Divine Vision

Site specific Installation Art By Chiman Dangi

Residency Period: 15 September 2024 – 15 October 2024

 Location: Land Art Museum, Hestøya, 7818 Lund, Norway 

As visitors walk the forested path, they arrive at a clearing—a quiet threshold—where The Divine Vision stands, a stone stele encircled by hand-built dry stack walls. Shaped as a trapezoidal prism, these walls are composed of stones sourced from Hestøya Island itself. They echo across continents, symbolically linking this land in Norway with Khejarli, India—sites bound by a shared reverence for nature and resistance to its destruction.

Along the path, eyes—simple, two-dimensional forms once used by ancient cultures to observe the world—are etched into stones. But here, these carved eyes reverse the gaze: nature watches us. Embedded both in the approach and within the stele itself, they are a solemn reminder that the Earth is bearing witness, questioning whether humanity will uphold its duty to protect and sustain the resources that sustain us in return.

Though built solely from organic materials, the walls surrounding The Divine Vision represent the psychological and societal barriers we construct to distance ourselves from the natural world. The installation calls attention to this illusion of separation—challenging the belief that we have risen above the ecological web to which we still belong.

In this sacred space, one is invited to pause, reflect, and remember the fragility of nature’s bounty. The stillness becomes a prayer—linking Hestøya in 2024 with Khejarli in 1730, where 363 lives were given to protect the sacred Khejri trees. Just as that sacrifice planted the seed of the global environmental movement, this stele offers continuity: a temple to the Earth, across time and geography.

Two places. One vision. Eternal vigilance. https://www.artworldnow.com/2024/10/interview-renata-maiblum-tells-us-about.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com     land art

THIRD EYE 

THIRD EYE (Performance art) by Dr. Chiman Dangi

 Duration 35 minutes

Material-  Red clay, lime, Waste paper Plates.

Cureted by Asso.Prof. Umesh Nayak

 Uartan Conclave 9-12 December 2023

Place – Utkal Cultural University Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India.

In the heart of Utkal University of Culture lies a pond—once a source of reflection and renewal—now choked with garbage, neglected by both time and people. The "Third Eye" performance by Chiman Dangi confronts this silence, this decay, through a deeply symbolic and sensory intervention.

Moved by the painful condition of the university’s pond and the apathy of society toward environmental degradation, visual and performance artist Chiman Dangi initiated a live performance that urges collective awakening. Titled "Third Eye," the piece metaphorically invokes the divine eye of wisdom and destruction—an eye that sees beyond appearances and reacts against rising wrongs.

Dangi appeared wearing silver paper plates marked with symbolic third eyes, placed on his body and over his head—an embodiment of awareness, vigilance, and cosmic judgment. As he moved silently around the garbage-laden site, he used red clay pigment and lime powder to highlight discarded waste, symbolically marking it as a wound upon the Earth—too often ignored by the public eye.

Amid the foul odor of dumped waste, Dangi began by highlighting the garbage with earthy tones, performing amidst the filth that has become normalised. He also painted multiple eyes across his body—turning his skin into a canvas of perception—to draw attention toward the forgotten filth. The performance was documented through live videography, which he intends to share on public platforms to raise broader awareness and provoke dialogue.

“We conduct rituals to summon the rain god during droughts,” Dangi said. “But once rain blesses us, we don’t care to preserve water bodies like ponds and lakes. We know plastic is harmful, yet we continue to use it. We’ve become blind to our own destruction.”

The performance was not just symbolic—it was a call to conscience. Dangi’s third eyes watched and responded, tracing the toxic buildup with artistic rituals. With each step, he became both seer and nature, confronting ignorance, sorrow, and the slow violence of pollution.

“In ancient scriptures, when sin overwhelms the earth, the third eye of the divine opens,” Dangi explains. “This performance channels that awakening. I became the presence whose third eye is open—not to destroy, but to restore.”

"Third Eye" is not just a performance—it is an invocation. A reminder that if we continue to ignore the decay around us, then we are willingly erasing the very Earth that sustains us. Through this act, Chiman Dangi urges viewers to open their inner eye, recognize the sacredness of our environment, and embrace their shared responsibility to protect and preserve it.

 Crossing Over 

Crossing Over: An Art Performance

Concept Overview:

"Crossing Over" refers, in its literal biological sense, to the exchange of genetic material during the formation of a fetus. Symbolically, the term extends far beyond science—capturing the profound internal transitions that occur when individuals move between cultures, geographies, and stages of life.

This performance explores the invisible yet transformative shifts experienced during travel and migration. While outward appearances may remain unchanged, the mind and spirit often undergo a quiet, powerful metamorphosis. The way one perceives the world is forever altered—subtle but irreversible.

In Indian tradition, women have long offered their hair in acts of devotion, shaving their heads at temples as a symbolic sacrifice and surrender. Drawing from this powerful ritual, the artists reimagine and appropriate the act of head shaving as a metaphor for transformation, passage, and rebirth. It becomes a gesture not of loss, but of crossing over—into new identities, new understandings.

Artists 

Chiman Dangi (India): Visual Artist – Printmaking, Performance & Installation

Meropi Mitrou (Greece): Visual Artist – Photography

Betsy Williamson (Canada): Visual Artist – Mixed Media

While each artist arrives in Udaipur with distinct roots—Chiman from a nearby village in Jodhpur, Rajasthan,  Meropi from Greece, and Betsy from USA—the city becomes a common ground, inspiring deep artistic and personal connection. Betsy, initially in Udaipur for the one-month Art Junction International Artist Residency in (Ambamata) now Badanga Udaipur chose to extend her stay, drawn in by the spirit of place and collaboration.

Performance Details:

Performers: Chiman Dangi and Betsy Williamson

Videography: Meropi Mitrou

Concept Development: Chiman Dangi, Meropi Mitrou, Betsy Williamson

Location: Daiji Footbridge, Udaipur, Rajasthan

Date & Time: Friday, 9 October 2015 | 5:45 PM

This performance is a meditative journey—a symbolic act of release, remembrance, and renewal—anchored in cross-cultural friendship and shared artistic intention.

OXYGEN

Oxygen | Site specific Installation & Performance Collaboration with School children's 2018 | Narrative Movements International Artist's Residency Suri, Kolkata INDIA 

Materials – Spade, Deepak Clay, oil and Cotton

Save trees

Title: Oxygen – A Breath of the Future
Art Installation and Performance by Chiman Dangi
Location: Narrative Movements International Artist Residency, Suri, India
Medium: Clay lamps, soil, cotton, spades, school children

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Concept Note:

In a quiet forest grove, young children—dressed in school uniforms, eyes filled with curiosity—gently embrace trees. Their small arms stretch around ancient trunks, becoming symbols of tomorrow’s guardians. This image becomes a living sculpture, a performance breathing life into the urgent cry for environmental awareness. The work is aptly titled “Oxygen”—a metaphor for trees as the lungs of our planet and children as its future breath.

Inspired by the powerful story of Amrita Devi and the Khejarli Massacre of 1731, where over 363 Bishnoi villagers sacrificed their lives to protect sacred Khejri trees, this installation becomes an intergenerational echo of that resistance. By involving schoolchildren, the artist passes this spirit forward—reminding us that the fight for nature’s survival must begin in the hearts of the youngest.

The ground installation, made with earthen lamps (deepaks), cotton, and clay, forms floral mandala-like patterns reminiscent of sacred rituals. Each lamp, lit or unlit, represents both potential and fragility—the light that can shine only if we nurture what gives us life.

Spades (fawdas), symbols of labor and earth connection, are not used to destroy but to shape—signaling a reclaiming of tools for protection rather than extraction.

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Narrative:

Children are not merely participants—they are witnesses and heirs to the earth. By hugging the trees, they reenact a resistance born centuries ago in Rajasthan’s deserts. Their innocence adds weight to the gesture. Their smiles, their silence, their shadows among the trees—these are acts of defiance against deforestation, pollution, and the forgetting of indigenous wisdom.

This art installation invites viewers to pause. To breathe. To remember that Oxygen is not free—it is gifted by the earth, and it is our duty to protect its givers.

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Message:

This is not just art. It is a call to conscience.
A reminder that what we plant in children’s hearts will bloom in forests or vanish in flames.
“Oxygen” is not just what we inhale—
It is what we must protect, nurture, and pass on.

 

Heritage |Site specific Installation & Performance Collaboration with local 2020 | Art Juncation   Sowing Seeds International Village Art Residency Udaipur India     https://blog.rowleygallery.co.uk/sowing-seeds/

Materials – Chisel Hammer, Found object Cloth and Pigment

Encounter

Encounter 

Environment Art Project, performance & Installation, 4th KIAR International Art Symposium Pune India.

 

From My Window’s| Site specific Installation 2019 |International Multimedia Art Symposia Mohanlal Sukhadia University Udaipur India

Materials – Found object and Pigment  Powder

khejri, for trees (Khejarli Chipko movement's founder fiction)

 Khejri, for the Trees

Chiman Dangi (India) and Vincent Barré (France)
Sapchat Cave, Saint-Nectaire, Massif du Sancy, 2016
Arts Nature en Sancy – Horizons, 10th Edition

At the entrance to the Sapchat Cave in the Massif du Sancy, silver-ringed trees line the path, leading to a solitary stele draped in silver leaves. Etched into its surface is a story of resistance, memory, and ecological reverence.

In 1731, in the village of Khejarli in Rajasthan, India, a woman named Amrita Devi stood against a royal decree ordering the felling of the sacred Khejri trees—vital to the desert ecosystem and deeply revered by the local community. Together with her three daughters, she embraced a tree and was killed with it. Their sacrifice ignited a movement, and soon hundreds of villagers—women, children, and men—gave their lives to protect the trees. This act of defiance marked one of the earliest known ecological uprisings and sowed the seeds for what would later be recognized as the Chipko (meaning “to embrace”) movement.

The installation "Khejri, for the Trees" is a poetic and political reflection on environmental loss, climate change, and the human relationship to nature. It draws a poignant parallel between the deforested, desertifying lands of Rajasthan and the forested highlands of the Sancy. While some temperate regions witness the return of trees, others—like Rajasthan—face an accelerating ecological decline.

What connects these distant geographies is a shared responsibility: to protect, value, and restore the natural world. This work is a call to remember the courage of communities who have fought for the land, and a reminder that the Earth’s fragile balance depends on collective stewardship across continents.

                             

khejri, for trees (Khejarli Chipko movement's founder fiction) | Site Specific sculpture / Performance with Vincent Barre (France), Cave Sapchat, Saint-Nectaire France , Massif du Sancy,  #Horizons Arts nature in Sancy 2016.  http://lemag.myclermont.fr/horizons-sancy/

Peepal Pooja

Peepal Pooja 

Peepal Pooja | Site Specific Performance, Installation and Video | Healing Hills Artist Residency 2015 | Morni Hills Panjab India. Materials: Peepal Tree trunk, Red and white cloth, pots, local pigment powder *Junior Fellowship Ministry of Culture, Indian Govt. Program.

From Market to Dumping Ground - Matheran Waste Cart Procession

From Market to Dumping Ground - Matheran Waste Cart Procession | Site Specific Performance Collaboration by Chiman Dangi and Brydee Rood 2015 |  Matheran Green Festival. 

Spurred from the context of life in Matheran Hills, a performance action, which involved high-jacking a working rubbish collection cart, and honouring its workers and the process of waste collection by unfolding a series of a sacred rituals throughout the procession from the main market place to the Matheran Dumping Ground. We created garments from silver plates, leaf plates and recycled fabrics; we decorated Jharoo with gold and silver foils and ribbons, and used them like warrior’s arms or ceremonial staffs. Our heads were adorned with a crowning 3rd eye for nature something befitting the forest on the forehead and empowering the inner eco warrior and garbage goddess queen.

From Market to Dumping Ground - Matheran Waste Cart Procession was created as a direct response to the environs of Matheran - meaning "forest on the forehead" an eco sensitive Bombay hill station “discovered by Hugh Poyntz Malet, the then district collector of Thane district in May 1850. Today

Matheran is a very curious place, without modes of popular transport cars, bikes, busses… the tradition of riding by horseback, hand pulled cart or walking prevails and impacts positively on daily life an inviting lush holiday destination popular with tourists. On the other hand - the impact and residues of human waste are evident throughout the delicate habitat. Plummeting breath taking views into Matheran’s green valleys are belied by accumulated carpets of thrown plastic bottles, food packets, snack plates… The evidence of a contemporary human presence carelessly left in the wake of their collective daily life.