In River Morphologies, Reena Saini Kallat draws attention to drying rivers around the world. Painted on paper are arid riverbeds, once life-bearing arteries, now reduced to delicate contours of ecosystems in retreat. These dessicated terrains are overlaid with laser-cut soundwave forms derived from archival field recordings of the rivers’ original sounds. This visual abstraction sensorially translates the gurgles, murmurs, and roars of flowing water into silent, static waveforms. These are resonant yet unreadable, like spectral remnants of a lost script or an echocardiogram capturing the river’s last pulses.
Building on her earlier works such as Drawing on the Invisible, where the sounds of extinct birds were traced in salt, Kallat continues her inquiry into ecological loss. Here however, instead of ephemeral materials that dissolve, the laser-cut voids register the absence of the river’s sound. Drying rivers are not only ecological tragedies but also reminders of political fracture. In works like Hyphenated Lives and Leaking Lines, Kallat has examined how the natural flows of water are repeatedly disrupted by, the imposition of bureaucratic borderlines, the construction of dams for hydroelectric projects and the intensive exploitation of water for agriculture and industry. These interventions, often leading to drought and displacement have further accelerated the impacts of climate change. The drawings function as quiet testaments, asking: what happens when natural systems, once vital and shared, go mute?