I Bleed River 2124
once upon a date
i followed a river and a familiar face
i knew not where…
there,
near the earth, where war never ends
a bird was bombed; a crude chemical blaze;
the river once calm, engulfed that flame
i knew not where…
and all who believed the river must die
and all who believed an eye for an eye
100 years later…
tears solidified…
"I Bleed River 2124" illustrates the confluence of war and climate change through a series of atmospheric encounters. A projection of a burning lake, suffused with toxic smoke, dominates the room. Another video narrates the artist's journey along a real river at 28° North latitude. A neon tube guides visitors from the gallery's interior to an external courtyard marked with the date 2124, symbolising a future one hundred years from our water-abundant present.
Engulfed in a remote inferno sparked by bombings, the river's narrative is fundamentally altered, creating a new storyline for this ethereal entity in a tangible setting.
A glossary of weather terminologies used by the artist records the latitudes of twenty-first-century wars—Baghdad, Gaza Strip, Khartoum, Kermna, Kharkiv, Kasindi, Mariupol, Myanmar, and the West Bank. The installation speculates about deadly flames from missiles dropping like rain, aiming to destroy the combatant's environment and human psychogeography. The work examines the intersection of anthropogenic wars with climate change, exploring the profound impact of conflict on the environment and the human psyche.
Mithu Sen (IN)
Mithu Sen is a conceptual, interdisciplinary artist whose practice challenges social norms, institutional authority, and art world hierarchies. Through radical hospitality and “perpetual unbecoming,” she resists fixity, using poetic, playful yet provocative interventions and counter-narratives to reimagine identity, belonging, and power. Her work destabilizes societal codes, polite conventions, and the politics of lingua franca. Sen engages with the politics of language, the disciplining of bodies, and the unspoken rules of the art world. Her works often unfold as symbolic interventions and playful yet unsettling acts of "unbecoming," resisting fixity and scripted norms.
Sen’s work has crossed continents, inhabiting biennales, museums, galleries and experimental spaces where conventions are tested and hierarchies unsettled. She has performed and exhibited at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (2025) , Sharjah Biennale 15, UAE (2023); APT9 – 9th Asia Pacific Triennial (2018); Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (2018); Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi (2017); Guggenheim Museum, New York (2016); Unlimited, Art Basel (2016); Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan (2014); Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2014); Dhaka Art Summit (2014); Tate Modern Project Space, London (2013); Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (2011); and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (2008), among others.
Sen completed her BFA (1995) and MFA (1997) from Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati, Santiniketan, and a PG Program (visiting) from the Glasgow School of Art, UK (2000-2001).
In 2023, her ongoing commitment to dismantling polite impositions culminated in a major survey at ACCA, the Australian Center for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, and her 25-year monograph, Unmyth, work and world of Mithu Sen was launched in 2025.
She is the recipient of several awards, including the Škoda Prize (2010) and the Prudential Eye Award for Contemporary Asian Art – Drawing (2015).
Sen lives and works in New Delhi, India.
