Visual Artist | Visual Anthropologist | Storyteller of Human–Nature Relationships
Anagha Kusum is a visual artist and visual anthropologist whose practice examines human–plant relationships through research-led painting and long-duration, site-specific projects. Her work operates across studio, field, and pedagogy, translating ecological observation, lived histories, and knowledge systems into structured visual forms. Through bodies of work such as Entangled Ecologies, Growing Museum, and Chronicle Works, she develops art as a methodological practice—one that attends to time, care, and the ethics of engagement rather than representation alone.
DISCOVER CHERISHED CHRONICLES
Chronicle Works are long-duration, research-led paintings developed through sustained engagement with individuals or institutions. These works translate lived histories, ecological practices, or collective journeys into carefully structured visual systems. Each Chronicle emerges through listening, observation, and time, and is undertaken selectively alongside the artist’s ongoing research-based practice.
Blooms of Sonale
2ft x 2ft, Acrylic on Paper
Blooms of Sonale is a Chronicle work developed over eight months, tracing the trees planted by Atul and Geetanjali Kulkarni over the past two decades. The painting brings together individual acts of planting as a modular visual field, where time, care, and repetition become the primary structure. Rather than depicting growth as spectacle, the work holds planting as a quiet, sustained practice embedded in everyday life.
Growing Museum
'Growing Museum' began from a simple urge — to let art grow also in the places that shape it. Many of the stories, textures, and observations that Anagha was drawn to did not belong only inside formal galleries. They also belonged in the landscapes and communities where they were born.
Each edition develops quietly over four months, taking its form from the people, the land, and the everyday rhythm around it. The spaces are native, the subjects are native, and the Growing Museum becomes something that feels lived rather than displayed.
Growing Museum is not a project or an outreach initiative. It’s simply another way she works — creating spaces and installations where art can also breathe outside traditional walls, and where new audiences meet it in an effortless and natural way.
Gunehar, Kangra Valley,
Himachal Pradesh, India (2021)
In partnership with Kahani ki Dukaan
In Gunehar, the Growing Museum unfolded through a living installation of words. We moved between the older and younger generations, gathering the vocabulary that shaped their memories, landscapes, and imaginations. What emerged was a shifting map of language—lost words, new words, changing meanings—showing how a community evolves even as it holds on to its roots. The installation became a breathing archive, not of objects but of conversations, echoing the way Gunehar remembers, forgets, and continually rewrites itself.
Sonale, Maharashtra, India (2023)
In partnership with The Tarapa Workspace
In Sonale, the museum grew through the eyes and footsteps of children. We followed their routes to the trees they loved—trees they climbed, named, sheltered under, or spoke to. Their bonds with the landscape revealed a world of intimate geographies, where each tree held a story of play, trust, and belonging. By mapping these relationships, the museum became a portrait of Sonale’s living ecology, told not through science or nostalgia but through the genuine affection children hold for the natural world around them.
Deulgaongada, Maharashtra, India (2025)
In partnership with The Deepgriha Society
In Deulgaongada, the project turned toward the vastness and subtlety of the grasslands. I walked through their shifting colours, textures, and silences, tracing the life that thrives in what often appears empty. The grassland became both subject and collaborator—teaching patience, attention, and the art of noticing. Through this exploration, the museum grew as an ecological memory of the place, honouring a landscape that is fragile, overlooked, yet deeply alive with its own rhythms and histories.
Research
Anagha's practice sits at the intersection of visual anthropology, archaeology, childhood studies, and human–nature relationships. She explores how children construct meaning through stories, objects, landscapes, and sensory engagement. Across workshops and field projects, she designs slow, reflective experiences that help learners connect identity, culture, and ecology.
Research Focus
Childhood, Identity & Belonging
How children negotiate selfhood through narratives, memory, and place.
Art Education & Multisensory Learning
Hands-on making, observation, and material sensitivity as learning tools.
Human–Nature Relationships
Children’s emotional and cultural connections with plants, gardens, and ecology.
Participatory & Community Art
Collaborative processes where children and communities co-create knowledge systems.
Archaeology, Memory & Time
Using archaeological thinking to explore continuity, change, and lived experiences.
Teaching Practice
For nearly two decades, Anagha has created research-driven workshops and learning programmes for children, educators, and cultural institutions.
Institutions & Collaborations
Anagha has been invited to design and conduct workshops, lectures, courses and educator trainings by leading academic and cultural institutions, including:
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Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Gandhinagar, India
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Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), India
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Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai, India
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Symbiosis Institute of Design, Pune, India
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Gujarat University, India
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The Theatre Company, India
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Various schools, museums, NGOs, and cultural centres across India