Over the last several years, Jitish Kallat has been developing a “vocabulary of studio rituals” that explore aesthetic questions mediated by natural elements and the passage of time.

In Integer Study (drawing from life), three sets of freighted numbers along with the timestamp of a moment in the day give rise to a thought-form. The three integers are the algorithmically estimated human population of the planet at that very moment as well as the estimated births and deaths that have occurred until that time of day. The numbers are abstractions forming a triangulation of life by mapping birth, death and time. In these works an arc of existential questions morph into ecological ones; from reflections on climate and extinction to evolution and decay.