Searching for Ashoka’s Diversity: Myopic Miniatures by Priyanka Muniyappa

Nivedita Salar, Class of 2019

The Ashoka Art Gallery is currently running Myopic Miniatures, an exhibition of paintings by Priyanka Muniyappa (YIF 2018). The exhibition is a visual study of the plethora of insects found in and around Ashoka. The inauguration took place on Tuesday, 23rd January. It was an immersive audio-visual experience, where people could view Priyanka’s works as ambient tracks, composed by Karan Tuli (a member of the AAG Team), played in the background.

Priyanka’s paintings are done in muted, earthy colours. She tells me that most of it comes from her previous preference for illustrations. “I have always used black and white,” she says. This time, the subjects of her paintings forced her to step out of her comfort zone and use colours: “I needed to do justice to the insects.” This shift is evident in a lot of her works in Myopic Miniatures. Priyanka plays around with colours and textures to highlight or suppress different elements. For instance, she changes the colours of the backgrounds, creating them in grey scale, to highlight the brilliant colours of the insects. These colours become a little bit of Priyanka’s own touch in every painting. One of the paintings, “Dripping Like Honey”, features a snail with golden slime; “Jade Soldier” features a bug painted in a bright, jewel-toned emerald colour.

Priyanka also enlarges all the insects so the details are clearer to the viewer. This “blowing up” of the insects ties in with the purpose behind Priyanka’s exhibition; the creative process for Myopic Miniatures began after one of the many fumigation processes on campus. Priyanka recounts how she saw a dead wasp one day and decided to bring it to her room. On closer examination, she realised that the wasp was still alive. It was struggling in its last moments, frothing at the mouth. She felt helpless: “I just couldn’t do anything.” Priyanka professes that insects had always fascinated her, but after this incident she became keenly aware of the insect life on campus. She started out by photographing and recording these insects. As people learned about her interest, they began to tell her about the insects they found on campus; so there was soon a chain of people who were noticing the diversity of Ashoka’s insect life and, knowingly or unknowingly, preserving it.

Even then, a lot of the insects Priyanka would find one day would be dead the next day. She says that the fumigation is doing a lot of unintended damage to the insects, while the mosquitoes, even now, become resistant to the chemicals used for fumigation. People on campus are also unmindful of these tiny creatures; students would walk over insects without realising, or squash them if the insects so much as jumped on their arms. This lack of compassion for insects became a driving force for Priyanka; from tiny paintings and sketches in a journal, her works went to the full-fledged, multi-media exhibition at the AAG.

Some recurring elements in Priyanka’s paintings begin to make more sense as she explains this to me. For instance, there are recurring golden and silver threads winding around the insects’ bodies in many paintings. These golden and silver chains are representative of the fumigation that holds them prisoner. “Any of these insects in chains can die at any moment,” explains Priyanka. Another recurring symbol in the artworks is the third eye. Sometimes, it is hidden in the pattern on the insects’ wings; at other times, it is clearly visible as an addition. The purpose behind incorporating the third eye was to add an element of surrealism. The “eye” also represents the awareness of the insects. Priyanka narrates anecdotes where she felt like the insects were looking directly at her: “I’d look at them and they’d look back”. She felt like the insects were aware of her and were listening to her, giving her company. They weren’t just “creepy crawlies” that one could ignore as background elements. The third eye becomes a representation of the awareness she felt the insects possessed.

The experience of seeing the insects on such a magnified scale, with all their brilliant colours and patterns, makes me wonder why we are unable to see them everyday. Perhaps it is because we’ve forgotten to be mindful of things until they look us right in the eye. The fumigation process is a threat to Ashoka’s biodiversity, but so are many of us. A lot of the insects are out on the basketball court or in front of lifts, but we never realise when we walk over them and squash them to death.

Priyanka hopes that people take away feelings of compassion and empathy for Ashoka’s microscopic residents from her exhibition. She sums up her thought in a sentence when she says, “You are not the centre of the universe”. Seeing these artworks does the intended job of raising awareness about the dying insects. They are an important part of the natural ecosystem. Moreover, it is their land that we occupy. We should make efforts to be more considerate of the diversity that exists within the Ashokan campus — not just in the people, but in all living creatures.

Myopic Miniatures will be open for viewers for one month at the Ashoka Art Gallery (third floor, New Academic Block, YIF office).