New Delhi, June 12 -- India produces more than 60 million tonnes of solid waste every year, half of which remains untreated and heaped into landfills. Rapid growth in urban consumption is one of the key contributing factors, further compounded by inadequate treatment and recycling mechanisms. These landfills often happen to be in the outer fringes of the city or in rural hinterlands, obscured from sight for the average urban citizen, whose consumption habits generate that waste.

Against this alarming backdrop, artist Navjot Altaf's body of work, part of her recently-concluded solo exhibition, Waste Archives as Landscape, at Jehangir Nicolson Art Gallery in Mumbai makes a prescient clarion call. Comprising paintings, installations, sculpt...