Thukral and Tagra serve Bitter Nectar at Bikaner House

At Bitter Nectar, Sustaina India’s exhibition at Bikaner House, the installations are interactive and far from abstract or interpretative. Solve a puzzle on the apricot supply chain installation (Rē)Frame by visual artist Anuja Dasgupta, and you win 12 Ladakhi apricots! An animated video on a girl who finds it difficult to order something sustainable for her birthday, stays with you beyond the show. The “invisible bitterness” in our food that comes from labour, climate change or wildlife conflict, is made painfully obvious here.

Solving (Rē)Frame’s apricot supply chain puzzle

Another head-turner is Mari Vaadi Ma. Hundreds of tiny clay sculptures radiate outwards from an empty circle at the centre of the bright space. Their size forces you to get down on the ground… only to see that they are, in fact, a pride of 550 lions. By visual artist Mrugen Rathod, it hints at single-species conservation in Gujarat’s Gir forests, an ecological problem because it neglects ecosystem-level health, which is causing Asiatic lions to move out of their habitat and encroach onto nearby mango orchards. The aam-sher are made with soil from Gir.

A pride of 550 aam-sher made with soil from Gir

Sumir Tagra, of the artist designer duo Thukral & Tagra — who curated the exhibition with CEEW (Council of Energy, Environment and Water) — says this was intentional. “The aim is to literally ground art in reality,” says Tagra. The duo has also mentored the artists. “We haven’t used any walls and absolutely no art jargon. We want people to interact with the art, to understand it and take what they’ve learnt here, home.”

Thukral & Tagra

Discarded bedsheets and vegan wood

Bitter Nectar has 10 installations. Using food and fruit as the entry point, they explore how ecological stress and changing agrarian systems are reshaping everyday life across India. (Recent CEEW research found that heat stress is diminishing labour productivity, particularly for outdoor and informal workers, potentially costing India 35 million full-time jobs. The impact is rippling through household incomes and economic resilience.) But, as Thukral and Tagra point out, our convenience-driven lifestyles often hide labour, interdependence, and ecological processes.

An installation at Bitter Nectar

The duo has also ensured that the exhibits and the logistics behind their creation have as little embedded energy as possible. Discarded bedsheets and cloth have been used instead of bubble wrap, ‘vegan wood’ was used to make the frames, and the walls were painted with natural colours. “The wall has become a commercial commodity now. The art here has no trade attached to it. There is no buying or selling; it is purely educational,” states Tagra. Perhaps a nod to the just-concluded India Art Fair? Regardless, effort has been made to ensure that only the subject matter of the exhibit stays bitter.

An installation at Bitter Nectar

A workshop for Valentine’s Day

Bitter Nectar is an academically strong exhibition; in Sustaina’s three editions, up to 17 PhDs have taken part. The 2026 edition has three fellows participating, all of whom have been deeply embedded in the ecosystem that they are researching. Rathod reflects on mango monocultures and forest ecologies in Gir, Dasgupta explores seasonal knowledge and climate vulnerability through apricots in Ladakh, and Vedant Patil’s artistic investigation Spillage & Spoilage: How Does the Story of Milk Reveal Its Origin, Fragility, and Journeys Across Delhi–NCR? traces the nutritional drink’s journey across rural and urban networks, revealing the invisible labour and infrastructures that sustain daily consumption.

The aim is to communicate in-depth climate research in new ways. According to CEO Arunabha Ghosh, CEEW’s stake in Sustaina is to “…engage and excite the policy and science community, that, while data is good, we have all the evidence on how to act on climate change. And we need new ways to tell the story to a diverse audience. We need to find ways to connect to people, move people”.

An installation at Bitter Nectar

To help with this, Bitter Nectar also has Sustaina Weekends, a programme of panels and workshops — including one on how climate change is affecting the way we date (‘Relationships on a Hotter Planet’ is on Valentine’s Day). Through a mix of Zine-making, upcycling workshops, theatre performances, collaborations with Delhi quiz clubs and poetry clubs, the creator-led interactive showcase is exploring new ways to communicate climate stories.

Bitter Nectar is on till February 15 at Bikaner House, New Delhi.

The writer is a permaculture farmer who believes eating right can save the planet.