Title: Book of Abundance | Medium: Graphite, collage on Hahnemühle paper | Size: A3, hand bound, custom crafted notebook | Year: 2017
The 82 works in this custom, hand bound unique edition were executed over a period of 8 months, wherein Makanji’s preoccupations with environmental issues were translated into a deliberate merger of drawings and collages. Makanji chose the form of the work to be a book with the specific intent of creating an immersive and intimate experience for the viewer.
The book questions our perceptions of nature and how deeply conditioned by consumerism we are to think that a walk amidst cultivated swathes of land is a walk in “nature”. How the very notion of the “wild” can easily destabilize the human and how we have fought to subjugate and bring to order the “wild”.
The monochrome drawings in the book are layered with nuance, suggesting fragility and the senescent human form where as the collages being more pronounced, are clearly indicative of the violent impact of humans on the planet. These collected works attempt to reflect balance and imbalance; the futility of humans aspiring for eternity and that perhaps nature is the only absolute.
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