VAHANA वाहन

Sameer Reddy

Untitled (lakshmi) 2010, archival digital print

Tried to see this artist at MOCAD (Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit) last Friday, but my party bus was late from a flat tire (seriously)

This is exactly what I'm going for with VAHANA

What do you think? What messages are you getting from this picture? 

The content is supposed to be subtle, such as Tony the tiger on a Kellogg's cereal box standing for the tigers displaced by deforestation from palm oil used in Kellogg's products. The thing is that I don't know how others can communicate with the picture. Do they know about Goddess Durga? Do they know about unsustainable palm oil farming in Indonesia? Certainly, though, they know Kellogg Company brands. The goal of my project is to educate viewers about Hinduism and corporate recklessness.

I've obtained permission to use real swan and tiger specimens from the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History. This museum has some of the largest zoology collections in the country. I feel honored to be able to work with rare scientific skins.

I have also submitted my rough draft of my written thesis to my professors. This was an excellent exercise to pinpoint the remaining goals for Vahana. I finalized my thesis statement as well: 

The most recent iteration for VAHANA. Goddess Durga stands over her deceased tiger, symbolized through the Frosted Flakes mascot, Tony the Tiger.

Tony is on the verge of extinction on Sumatra in Indonesia because the Kellogg Company has partnered with Wilmar International to create unsustainable palm oil plantations on rainforest land.

This image was created at a protest in front of the Kellogg’s Headquarters in Battle Creek, Michigan. The protest occurred a month earlier on November 20th. It was organized by the campaign Forest Heroes. Please visit their website at www.forestheroes.org.

Along with producing this photograph, I created a giant cereal box from which petitions across Michigan were poured into a giant cereal bowl, which was delivered to administrators at Kellogg’s.

Finally, I delivered a speech to protestors about my experience in Indonesia and how devastating the impact of destruction of her rainforests will bring: thousands of tropical species displaced and thousands of indigenous Indonesians forced to decimate their own habitat by international corporations.

Upon returning to the second semester of my senior year, I will produce three photographs: Saraswati mourning her swan in front of BP, Durga mourning her tiger in front of food products which contain palm oil, and Krishna mourning his cows in meat sections of groceries.

This integrative project is proving to integrate many experiences into one:

Experience with Hindu practices, idols, and philosophy

Experience with Christian practices, icons, and philosophy

Experience with Indonesia’s nature

Exposure to environmental disasters

Activism

All I wish is that my images will provoke my audiences to:

Research Hindu culture

Research Christian culture

Reduce their footprint on the environment

Gain spiritual perspectives

I've been told by my professors to play more with my project. Instead of limiting myself to a logged forest, an oil spill, and CAFOs, I should go to places I hate—spaces that perpetuate over-consumption of petroleum, wood, food, and animals. I can provide a starting list:

landfills

recycling plants

meat markets as seen in your local grocery (or national corporation)

gas stations (BP, Shell, Exxon Mobil, Marathon)

corporate department stores (Wal-Mart, KMart, Macy's, JCPenney's, Kohl's, Sears, Target, Meijer, Kroger)

corporate fast food restaurants (McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, Pizza Hut, Arby's, Taco Bell, Wendy's, Subway)

car dealerships

parking lots

I am all for this idea of reaching outside the box of directly portraying these disasters. Who is able to fully realize the tragedies of petroleum released into natural habitat and of slaughtering animals in unsafe and unregulated processing plants? How many people have actually stepped in unrefined oil or the blood of a pig?

The issues I am addressing are generally left unseen due to the curtain of capitalism (read: media and logos) and physical distance from these events. Fortunately, consumerism allows me to visit my "local" Shell station to see the resources drained from Mother Earth into my car. Consumerism allows me to purchase "local and organic" vegetable spread made from palm oil in Indonesia. Consumerism presents many opportunities to unveil the cause of itself... its products, manufactured for the customer to use and the seller to transform into money.

In other words, our goddesses and animals suffer the consequences of human irresponsibility.

In the past couple weeks, I have finalized the pre-pre-pre-production of my project.  These are preliminary sketches for what I am envisioning for my photo shoots and which gave me my ultimate idea of portraying the vahanas killed by anthropogenic causes.  Instead of being killed by correlative environmental dangers, it focuses on the gods' and goddess' loss of his and her animal and their emotions of mourning. These feelings are what I will attempt to use for the viewer to connect with the animals and the negative impacts humanity is placing on Earth.

My big idea is to create 4-6 large photographic images of Hindu deities shown withdrawing their crowns and expressing human emotions due to the death of their personal vehicle ("vahana" in Sanskrit), an animal, caused by an environmental and moral problem, such as deforestation, Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, oil spills and plastic waste, etc.  Along with presenting the images on a wall, I aspire to compile my images with facts about the annual deaths and population decline of each respective animal into small booklets the viewer can take from the exhibition.

Mythology, in all cultures, is a reflection and contemplation of society’s and nature’s world. In Hinduism, the vehicle of the deity is not separate from the deity itself.  On our planet, developed and conscious humans are not separate from their animal and plant counterparts.

Goddess Saraswati with Her vahana, Hamsa the swan

Goddess Durga with Her vahana, the Tiger

Lord Shiva with His vahana, Nandi the bull