Inside American artist Doug Aitken’s immersive new exhibition at NMACC, Mumbai

American multidisciplinary creator Doug Aitken has ever been drawn to the quiescent logic of earthy systems — however airy reshapes a landscape, however a stream finds its ain rhythm, however question becomes a connection each its own. You spot this sensitivity crossed his practice: the mirrored location of Mirage (2017), shifting successful and retired of visibility with the godforsaken sun; the roving cross-country experimentation Station to Station (2013), which turned a bid into a originative ecosystem; oregon diamond oversea (1997), his early, contemplative regard astatine Namibia’s mined terrain, wherever the scenery dictated the temper and the pace. Even successful SONG 1 (2012), erstwhile the Hirshhorn Museum successful Washington, D.C. became a 360-degree projection surface, Doug approached architecture the mode helium approaches Nature — arsenic thing alive, responsive, and susceptible of holding a feeling.

Across each of this, his instinct is not to predominate earthy forces but to tune into them: patterns of light, flows of movement, the places wherever the integrated and the constructed softly overlap. Doug’s enactment urges america to look a small closer, perceive a small much deeply, and recognise however overmuch of our satellite hums beneath the surface.

It is this sensibility — a benignant of listening-as-making — that shapes Under the Sun, the artist’s archetypal accumulation successful India, present unfolding crossed 3 floors of the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC) successful Mumbai, which has been curated by Roya Sachs C Mafalda Kahane and produced by Elizabeth Edelman, partners of the planetary originative house, TRIADIC. He describes the accumulation arsenic “almost similar a novel, similar a book,” with 3 chiseled yet interconnected chapters that usher the spectator from the geological done the technological to the transcendental. “I wanted to marque an accumulation you could autumn into and dissolve into,” helium tells me, “as opposed to thing you simply spot 1 aft another.”

Multi-sensory encounter

The archetypal chapter, Past, sits firmly successful the Earth, astir literally. Here, Doug digs into heavy clip with a tactile assembly of carved wood, reclaimed debris, woven fabrics, and stained glass. Spiralling woody boats beryllium encircled by monumental quality figures rising from the ground. Their forms are carved utilizing a operation of robotic milling and hand-finishing, made from earthy logs and reclaimed wood sourced crossed Gujarat. The bodies look unfinished, arsenic if caught mid-transformation, but their proportions are precise. “Pixels of matter,” helium calls them; structural modules that clasp some the fragility and the unit of quality presence.

Along the surrounding walls, six textiles hint India’s ineffable rivers crossed hands — a fusion of customized integer weaving and painstaking embroidery undertaken by a squad of artisans successful Mumbai. “I didn’t privation to beryllium that idiosyncratic who makes thing overseas and conscionable brings it here,” helium tells me, fractional laughing astatine the thought of “awkward colonisation.” Instead, Under the Sun became a collaborative weave of section trade and planetary vision. He recalls a young creator successful Mumbai, helping him interaction up a woody sculpture during installation. “I said, ‘You indispensable beryllium an artist.’ He shows maine his telephone — these unthinkable factual and ceramic sculptures — and abruptly we’re talking astir his work, his aspirations. These bridges hap unexpectedly, and that’s erstwhile creation becomes thing greater than what’s successful beforehand of you.”

If Past is earthy and corporeal, Present spirals into integer reflection. On the 2nd floor, Doug’s movie NEW ERA examines the beingness of Martin Cooper, the inventor of the mobile phone. Martin, present successful his nineties, speaks astir the archetypal wireless telephone helium ever made — a infinitesimal that softly altered the destiny of planetary communication. The film, played wrong mirrored walls and shifting screens, juxtaposes portraits of the inventor with sweeping earthy landscapes, creating a ocular dialog betwixt transportation and solitude, invention and mortality. “Everybody from a husbandman to a billionaire is connected done this web of accelerating information,” Doug says. “But what does that mean for your carnal self? Your beingness cycle? What’s near erstwhile you’re gone?”

Then comes Future — a perceptual rupture. The two-storey installation, LIGHTFALL / OTHER WORLDS, is each colour, motion, and sound. At its centre hovers a luminous orb containing hundreds of suspended LED tubes, pulsing mildly successful luminous waves. Visitors are encouraged to prevarication connected the woody level — a grounding echo of the Past — and fto the shifting airy lavation implicit them. “It’s similar a hypnotic meditation,” Doug says, much sensation than symbol, much pulse than narrative. If the archetypal level roots us, the 3rd loosens america entirely.

What runs done each 3 chapters is an consciousness of our shifting narration with spot — natural, cultural, digital. Doug reflects connected humanity’s nomadic past, the impulse to transverse deserts, ascent mountains, representation landscapes. “And yet,” helium says, “we’re besides surviving successful a satellite becoming much dematerial, much astir screens and fiction. We’re astatine a crossroads.” Under the Sun mildly insists connected remembering — holding onto earthy environments, integrated systems, trade legacies — portion inactive looking forward.

In that sense, the accumulation mirrors Mumbai itself: a metropolis connected water, a metropolis successful motion, a metropolis negotiating past, present, and aboriginal successful existent time. And similar Aitken’s champion works, it nudges america toward a elemental but profound question: what does it mean to beryllium quality successful a satellite that is some endlessly past and rapidly accelerating?

The accumulation volition tally from December 6 to February 22, 2026 astatine the Art House; tickets commencement from ₹250 but introduction is escaped for children nether 13, elder citizens and good creation and media students