The Scent of Grounded Change

In Bengaluru, every new road, metro line, or construction project often begins by disrupting the ecology of the city. Yet many of these interventions have also sparked protests, legal challenges, and collective acts of resistance that sought to protect the living systems that sustain it.

This project maps ecological disruptions across Bengaluru's zones alongside the pushbacks that emerged in response to them. It asks a simple question: how often did collective action succeed in protecting the city's ecology, and how often was the soil allowed to breathe?

Within the exhibition, petrichor, the smell of rain on earth, marks places where these pushbacks succeeded. In zones where ecological loss prevailed, visitors encounter contrasting smell of tar, burning, and synthetic materials.