Birth of a Grenade

For over a hundred years, when the ships belonging to the East India Company brought barrels of saltpeter (saltpetre) to the shores of England, they also brought with them a force that determined how we move in the world today. Saltpeter, also known by its chemical name, Potassium Nitrate (KNO3) was a coveted global commodity that was mined, traded and fought over by competing colonial powers for its role in the production of gunpowder. Birth of a Grenade draws connections between economic botany and colonial sciences with the present day hyper-militarised war production. The work performs an alternating role of grieving, anticipating and raging for a world armed to the teeth. The film has been hand processed in bananas, dates and cocoa powder—materials once carried in the bellies of ships and across the heaving seas into Europe. The source and its journeys since obscured, diffused and discharged. — Commissioned for the 8th Artishok Biennale, Tallinn The work is made with support from Kone Foundation Distribution: AV-arkki, Finlandia.

Shubhangi Singh
Shubhangi Singh is a transdisciplinary artist whose practice draws from existing knowledges to address movement, identity, queries related to the body and its relationship with the environment. Working across media, from text to moving image and site-specific installation Singh’s works are routinely suspended between fiction and non-fiction, often adopting the position of an unreliable narrator.