EPHERMERAL EARTH  

MANDALAS, LAND ART, AND THE SPIRITUAL ECOLOGY IN SOUTH ASIA 

By Emma McMullin

Long before the term “land art” entered contemporary art discourse, South Asian traditions had long embedded environmental harmony into the fabric of everyday life. Among the most enduring and symbolic of these practices is the creation of mandalas; circular, often symmetrical designs that reflect the interconnectedness of the universe and humankind’s place within it.

While today’s Western conception of land art often evokes massive earthworks and conceptual interventions, South Asian mandalas offer a quieter, more intimate alternative: one grounded in spiritual rhythm, impermanence, and ecological respect.

A Brief History of Mandalas

The word mandala comes from Sanskrit, meaning “circle” or “disc.” Its use spans multiple traditions in South Asia, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Mandalas first appeared in ancient Indian scriptures as cosmic diagrams used in meditation, ritual, and temple architecture. In Hindu cosmology, mandalas often depict the universe as concentric layers emanating from a central point, a symbolic representation of divine order.

These designs later spread along with Buddhism into Tibet, Nepal, China, and Japan, taking on even more spiritual layers. Tibetan sand mandalas are meticulously created over days or weeks, only to be swept away upon completion, a visual and spiritual metaphor for impermanence.

In everyday Indian life, mandala-like patterns appear in rangoli, kolam, alpana, and muggu, regional names for decorative, often geometric designs made on thresholds and courtyards. Crafted daily or during festivals, these patterns use natural materials like rice flour, flower petals, and spices, and function as offerings to deities, ancestral spirits, and the land itself. They are transient and regenerative, echoing cycles of nature and showing that art and ecology have long been entwined in Indian tradition.

Contemporary Echoes

While few contemporary South Asian artists explicitly replicate mandalas in their land-based practices, the visual logic and spiritual ethos of mandalas continue to shape eco-art across the region. Artists working with soil, time, ritual, and community echo the essence of mandalas through impermanence, circularity, and a reverence for nature.

Artists like Subodh Kerkar, who engages the coastal landscape of Goa through ephemeral, large-scale installations, often use circular motifs and natural materials like shells, fishing nets, and sand. His works, such as The Earth Bowl, are inspired by sacred geometries and attuned to the ocean’s rhythms, functioning as both artistic gesture and environmental reflection.

Navjot Altaf, whose collaborative, community-based projects engage with ritual aesthetics and local knowledge systems, often incorporates circular forms and site-specific interventions rooted in the traditions of Indigenous communities such as those in Bastar, Chhattisgarh. Her practice blends philosophical inquiry with material and spatial poetics, foregrounding the cyclical relationships between humans and the natural world.

Also notable is Hemali Bhuta, whose practice involves materials like wax, turmeric, ash, or earth, substances that visibly decay, melt, or disappear. Her installations, often site-responsive and ephemeral, explore memory, ritual, and transformation. Bhuta’s sensitivity to material temporality and sacred space resonates deeply with the mandala’s meditative impermanence.

Reetu Sattar, a Bangladeshi artist, creates performance-based installations that often address the fragility of collective memory and cultural identity. Her use of repetition, rhythm, and gradual disintegration, as in her piece Harano Sur, echoes the slow, inevitable dissolution found in traditional mandala ceremonies.

Meanwhile, Siddhartha Kararwal works with biodegradable and organic materials to create installations that decompose over time, inviting audiences to witness both emergence and decay as parts of the same process. His art, deeply grounded in ecological awareness, highlights transience not as loss but as transformation.

Though their works may not directly replicate classical mandalas, these artists, working at the intersection of ritual, land, time, and ecology, embody a similar reverence for natural cycles and sacred temporality. They are actively reimagining and revitalizing tradition, weaving ancient, land-based aesthetics into today’s urgent ecological conversations.

Mandalas as Ecological Art

Perhaps one of the most profound aspects of mandalas, whether traditional or evoked in contemporary practice, is their ephemeral nature. Created to be swept away by wind, rain, or foot traffic, mandalas embody a worldview rooted in impermanence, natural cycles, and respect for the environment. Nothing is taken from the land that cannot be returned; nothing is built that cannot dissolve.

Many contemporary South Asian artists working with land and ritual embrace this ethos. Drawing from regional traditions, they often create site-specific, impermanent works that honor local materials, stories, and ecosystems. These practices, much like mandalas, offer an alternative to the permanence and monumentality associated with Western land art. They embrace process over product, presence over permanence.

As ecological crises deepen, these culturally rooted approaches present not only a compelling aesthetic but also a model for sustainable, reciprocal artmaking, where care, spirituality, and environmental consciousness are inseparable. In doing so, they reaffirm what mandalas have long taught: that beauty lies not in what endures forever, but in what honors the cycles of creation, decay, and renewal.