Living Lightly - Journeys with Pastoralists is a travelling exhibition on the land, lives and livelihoods of Indian pastoralists. It captures their remarkable history of mobility, the eco-systems that nurture their life-worlds, their culture, science, art, politics, spiritual moorings and the economics and challenges of herding. The exhibition comes to life through a fusion of testimonies, ethnographic material, archives, poetic forms, music, storytelling, crafts, material, crafted narratives, film and performance.
The Living Lightly exhibition is curated by Sushma Iyengar and premiered in IGNCA, Delhi in December 2016 to wide acclaim. This first exhibition was used to shine a spotlight on the pastoralists of Kachchh, Gujarat. A smaller edition of this exhibition travelled to Ahmedabad, where it was hosted at the ATMA building in October 2017. Living Lightly will now move to the south and incorporate elements of pastoralism as practised on the Deccan Plateau, scheduled to be hosted at the Bangalore International Centre in late 2022.
Living Lightly - Himalaya is scheduled to unfold over the coming years as a series of small exhibitions, culminating in a full-fledged exhibition in 2024. We are in the process of developing a virtual form of Living Lightly in partnership with Google Arts and Culture.
Living Lightly has served to get wide swathes of Indian society interested in the land, lives and livelihoods of pastoralism. Visitors have ranged from politicians and bureaucrats to academics, activists, media, and students from schools and colleges. Living Lightly has also served as a platform for conversations, consultations, and policy dialogues. Each edition of Living Lightly has been accompanied by a range of consultations, including two international conferences on pastoralism in 2016; a national workshop on breeds in 2017; workshops on the production of cheese from buffalo, goat and camel milk; and two sets of consultations on how pastoralist communities might use the Forest Rights Act to improve their tenurial security over scarce grazing resources.
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