Scarred Land series (2023)

Monali Meher has developed a body of work that includes not only installations, but also photographs, performances, and mixed-media drawings on handmade paper, such as her Scarred Land series. These drawings are created with Japanese ink, natural food dyes, as well as unconventional materials like adhesive bandages and coffee filter bags.

Meher describes her drawings as emotional mind maps: landscapes etched with the marks of exploitation, displacement, migration, loss, and forced transformation. Her work specifically refers to postindustrial terrains, war-torn regions, and areas impacted by conflict, mining, urban sprawl and environmental degradation, including climate change, flooding, and erosion. These forces leave visible traces – scars – on the land, turning it into a record of trauma and transformation.

In Meher’s work, the landscape becomes a witness to both human and ecological suffering, carrying memory in its very form. Yet, even as the land bears these wounds, it often regenerates, reclaims itself, and overgrows – signs of resilience, survival, and resistance.