Science Gallery Bengaluru is looking forward to opening its next exhibition-season, CARBON, an exhibition season, research festival, and living exhibition, that will tackle the challenges of the Anthropocene head-on. This exhibition will explore the tensions that carbon presents—the backbone of a fossil fuel-based economy, a driver of climate change, and yet, an indispensable element in our own bodies. Even with the wide range of programmes at SGB, the goal remains the same: to create research-backed public engagement programmes that are community-focused and interdisciplinary in nature. CARBON questions our complex, critical, and contentious relationship with the ubiquitous element in all its forms.

We are all made of carbon, as is everything around us. It forms the backbone of our DNA, is key to life maintaining processes like photosynthesis and respiration, and drives our industries. Our ability to control and manipulate carbon—whether as charcoal, oil, carbon nanotubes or buckyballs—has revolutionised every aspect of the way we live. From medicine and machinery to architecture and art—the sooty fingerprints of carbon are visible on almost everything humanity has built.

A critical ingredient to life and living—carbon has been at the centerstage of earth’s history. The evolution of human society in particular is not just fuelled by carbon but also tracked and traced through radioactive carbon. Today, carbon is placed at the centre of a global crisis—one for which we do not seem to have an immediate solution. There is an urgent call to “decarbonise” by sinking and sequestering carbon from the atmosphere, which we have relentlessly pumped into it in the name of development. This kind of a public discourse, however, marginalises the vital role carbon plays in the relationships around practically all life and non-life forms in the environment.

How do we understand carbon beyond the catch phrases and contradictions? Why does it behave the way it does—the elemental basis for life but equally a gas capable of suffocating life? A stone at the centre of an industry selling eternal love but built on the exploitation of thousands. As oil it has been the cause of wars and suffering. But even death and decomposition still leads to formation of the most sought after forms of fossil carbon after all.

As we enter a new age of carbon consciousness, how do we reimagine our relationship with this element? For this exhibition-season, we will work with individuals or groups who are critically exploring carbon in its diverse forms in both the contemporary and historical context, as well as those engaged with emerging research.