Rithika Merchant’s distinctive paintings imagine otherworldly futures in which new worlds, creatures and relationships have evolved after Earth becomes uninhabitable. ‘Beings’ inhabit these future contexts as central characters, surrounded by botanical and anthropomorphic symbols, and Merchant speculates on how their values, beliefs, technologies and relationships to their new worlds might develop. While previous series have shown these beings coming to terms with the destruction of their planet and preparing to leave, ‘Terraformation’ 2022–23 follows this departure and process of terraforming – shaping new planets to be more habitable.

In The Pollinator, a being grasps the stems of a pollen-rich plant, alluding to engineered pollination as a means of vegetative propagation and engineered cosmogony. Regolith is based on the idea of ant colonies and their ability to self-organise and communicate through their own ecosystem. Vimana illustrates a wondrous flying chariot based on ideas in the ancient Hindu Vedas and Jain Agamas texts. Inspired by how humpback whales sustain themselves with stored food over long migrations, Silo depicts a character encased in a whale-like shape filled with supplies.

In offering a very different vision of what a distant future might look like, Merchant alludes to the grim reality of our current environmental state, questioning the conventions and relationships that have come to threaten it.