An art installation at Buddha Jayanti Park. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Feb. 17: Fourteen modern art installations at Buddha Jayanti Park in Niladri Vihar tell the stories on how the concrete jungles are encroaching upon the green space and how the modern society is distancing itself from nature.

Created during weeklong workshop “Art and ecology: Search for sustainability”, which ended on Friday, the installations will stay there for public viewing in the future.

Smruti Sai Mishra, a young artist from the city, showed in his work “Lost innocence” how the concrete structures have come up killing green foliage and endangering the nature.

With two other friends Trinath Mohanty and Somnath Rout, Mishra constructed a model of apartment blocks inside a bed of flowers. With videos on nature and ecology screened on the polythene coated walls of the miniature housing model, the artists tried to give a message of the ill-effects of development through modern art.

Well-known artist Jagannath Panda, who conceptualised the workshop on theme on art and ecology, said: “This was an effort to make people aware of the ecology and their immediate environment. The installations will be here on display for as long as park authorities wish to showcase them.”

In a small documentary, Panda and his friend Ramakant Samantaray showed that people failed to recollect even the name of a common tree inside the park. Many people were seen watching the interesting documentary based on the tree near the entrance to the show.

Archana Handa, an artist and curator from Mumbai, created an interesting work of landscape involving medicinal herbs, green vegetable saplings. She dedicated the work to a gardener of the Buddha Jayanti Park.

Vice-chairman of the Bhubaneswar Development Authority Vishal Kumar Dev suggested that the art activities should be an annual affair in other city parks as well.

Culture and tourism Secretary Arabinda Padhee suggested that every park in the city should have a nursery so that people could buy saplings at nominal costs.

“It will help in having more greenery as people will be tempted to take the saplings from the parks after an evening or morning walk,’’ Padhee said.