Catalogue / Sayali Khanvilkar
See it on a wall
Shown at true size: 168 × 91 cm. A large work, for a big living room, office or café wall. The person is about 170 cm tall. Every work is shown whole, never cropped.
Sayali Khanvilkar
Faith or act
We call the river mother, then hook everything out of it
A scaled body the colour of river mud lies across a white bend.
Grey cloud thickens above it like smoke over water.
A small bird keeps watch at the top edge.
Pale flakes drift where a fish might swim.
Thin wire hooks curl along the bottom, waiting.
Everything is still. Nothing here is clean.
The work
Sayali Khanvilkar has seen rivers that people now call drains. People praise the Ganga and the Yamuna as mothers and goddesses. Then sewage, garbage and the waste left after rituals go into them. Faith or Act asks why what we do does not match what we say. Thin wires curl like the hooks of a fishing net. They take from the river and give nothing back. For this work Khanvilkar makes fish from bioplastic. The fish react to moisture and the experiment fails. "Failure is also a mentor," she says.
In the artist’s words
“What real faith is, is also a part of my practice. Faith nowadays is just an act. Many lives and nature are victims of it. We praise the Ganga and the Yamuna as our mothers and goddesses. This experiment taught me that experiments should be more precise. Failure is also a mentor.”
Not for sale
Shown with the artist’s permission. This work is not for sale.
- Theme
- Faith and polluted rivers
- Material
- Mixed media
- Size
- 168 × 91 cm
- Year
- 2026
- About the artist
- Sir j j school of art mumbai
- From
- Mumbai
- Code
- RC-8531
