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Born from the love for birds and rising concerns over their degrading quality of life in this city, Mumbai-born Kapadia’s moving artworks, both literally and figuratively, hide a message behind the fascinating videos. A view of the digital exhibit at the Colaba gallery “Growing up in the city, I observed that the usual chirping of birds in the mornings slowly dissolved into a silence. I wanted to channel my concerns into immersive art, but I knew it had to be rooted in credible data,” says Kapadia, who moved to London to pursue a career in Visual Design in 2021. Help was at hand from a familiar Great Hornbill — the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) opened its doors to archival material, and introduced Kapadia to veteran wildlife photographer, Nayan Khanolkar. White Rumped Vultures Six birds that face the brunt of the city’s ongoing metamorphosis — White Rumped Vulture (Critically Endangered), Purple Sunbirds (Least Concern), Black Headed Ibis, Peafowl (Least Concern), Lesser Flamingo (Near Threatened) and Steppe Eagles (Endangered) — form the basis of the artist’s exhibits through poignant photographs contributed by Khanolkar. With the birds in hand, Kapadia recalls stepping out for some actual groundwork. “Armed with a camera, I stepped out in Mumbai Central to capture textures that define the current state of the city. Sand, gravel, smoke, and concrete weren’t hard to find,” she reveals. Kapadia’s reimagined vultures at a dusty construction site Over an online viewing of the works on request, Kapadia shows us how these textures and Khanolkar’s photographs met in an AI image generator to create the final artworks. A photograph featuring two White Rumped Vultures, for instance, undergoes a dystopian makeover. A fog-like overlay takes over the backdrop, and the vultures that were previously seen in embrace, take starkly grimmer poses. Together with archival audio from the BNHS, that was later tweaked to portray the impending doom of the chirps falling silent, Kapadia suggests the artworks are best viewed live. Lesser Flamingos The artworks, created using Comfy UI, a customisable module-based open source AI tool are experimental at best, she agrees. “This is my passion project. In some of the works, you can also spot some stray elements like my balcony window — from where I shot pictures of towering buildings — making a brief appearance. While the moving images might not be the best representation of my ideas, it’s a step towards making conservation more intriguing for audiences,” she says. Samia Kapadia The BNHS seems to be all in on the idea. After the ongoing pilot exhibition, the artiste will find inspiration in 10 volumes of The Bird Man of India Salim Ali’s The Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan. “We’re also looking to turn this into an online experience soon, wherein viewers can log on to a microsite to watch the exhibits. I’m excited to see where this idea takes me,” she signs off. Nayan Khanolkar Till August 27; 11 am to 7 pm At Strangers House Gallery, Clark House, Wodehouse Road, Colaba. Log on to @samia_kapadia on Instagram (for updates)