Chlorophyll Park (Mutatis Mutandis) – 1, 2, 3

2010
Digital print mounted with diasec face
40 x 60 in./ 101 x 152 cm.

Chlorophyll Park (Mutatis Mutandis) is a series of three photo works that play with candid street shots of Mumbai by replacing the dusty grey of the tarmac with a digitally inserted carpet of artist-tended, studio-grown grass that was professionally photographed in Kallat’s studio. The resultant images seem straight out of an apocalyptic science-fiction or a utopian pipe dream. The grass, a vivid green, seems to have irrepressibly invaded the city even as weary pedestrians stroll past unperturbed by the change.Does the image foretell a dystopic future where nature will reclaim the city following human extinction? The mystery is deepened by the work’s subtitle Mutatis Mutandis, a term of Latin origin used in legal documents to mean “necessary changes having been made”.