Cultivating compost as an expressive medium
This week we welcome Vasudev Vashisht, a socially and ecologically engaged visual Indian artist based in New York. His work has been exhibited by the New York Foundation for the Arts, CreateCOP29, Photoville Festival, and Baxter St at Camera Club of New York – and internationally by Jaipur Art Week in India and Lishui Photography Festival in China.
“My work approaches these gardens as a localized ecosystem shaped by shared histories of migration, resilience, and collective care,” he said. “Garden soil layered with glacial memory, construction debris, and microbial labor becomes my photographic substrate.”
Vashisht is pursuing a Van Lier Fellowship at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center and was recently awarded the En Foco Artist Fellowship and the New York Foundation of the Art’s Immigrant Artist Program Fellowship. He has shared his artistic research through talks at the MASS MoCA, Society for Photographic Education annual conferences, and Urban Soil Institute NY, among other venues. He holds an Master’s of Fine Arts in photography from Parsons School of Design.
When not covered in soil or darkroom chemistry, he is trying to convince airport security that the soil-filled bags in his luggage are “art supplies.”
“I have been volunteering as a composter at the Pleasant Village Community Garden in East Harlem, NYC, for over two years,” he wrote. “Maintained primarily by immigrants & communities of color, the garden functions as a collaborative ecology where migrant histories converge with urban soil and plants carried across diasporas.”
He calls the compost box his “outdoor darkroom,” where “agency is shared and interaction is distributed.”
“Ecology through its sensorial limbs of humidity, heat, and air nourishes and shapes the exposure. Roly-poly eat through and deliver photograms. I create portraits of garden members whose stewardship keeps the space alive,” he said. “For many, the garden offers more than food; it offers belonging. It is a place to build social ties, share knowledge, and cultivate food security in the face of urban precarity and environmental change.”
For Vashisht, the garden “speaks” through its “living systems.”
“We cultivate community gardens and, like the plants, root ourselves in them,” he said.
See more of Vashisht’s work on his website and Instagram.
