Guided Walk
Aesthetics of Power
Abhishek Khan
Horticultural Building, Lal Bagh, Wiele Studio, Late 19th-Early 20th century, Albumen print, PHY.21244.8.1
Join us at the exhibition Paper Gardens: Art, Botany and Empire, and unravel the entangled histories of colonial-era classification of the natural world through botanical illustration. Drawing on select illustrations from the exhibition, Abhishek Khan discusses the roles and aesthetics of gardens and garden-making, and their colonial preference over native sacred groves. He goes on to examine how these images emerged from masculine frameworks and compares them to native botanical art and contemporary works by women artists.
Bookings
Abhishek Khan
Abhishek Khan is a research-based artist, designer, and storyteller who works under the pen name Hand Jobs Inc. His practice explores the relationships between people, memory, and the natural world, with a particular focus on trees as living archives of ecological and cultural knowledge. Through storytelling, design, and public engagement, he seeks to challenge “tree blindness” and reintegrate trees into everyday awareness.
Khan is the founder of LalBagh.info, an independent, publicly accessible digital archive dedicated to Bengaluru’s iconic Lalbagh Botanical Garden. The platform documents flowering cycles, plant histories, and seasonal changes within the garden, and includes resources such as the Flower Finder, self-guided Fragrance Walk, and a publicly accessible Flower Calendar that tracks blooms throughout the year.
As a designer, Khan has developed visual identities and communication systems for cultural and creative initiatives, including the brand identity for General Items. Across his work, he combines research, design, and narrative practices to create accessible ways of engaging with ecology, place, and collective memory.
