During my residency in Hampi, hosted by The Institutum and Hampi Arts Lab, I encountered a landscape where human and non-human histories overlap but do not follow the same timelines. The ruins—once centres of power—are now quietly reclaimed by animals, weather, and vegetation. I arrived with a question from my earlier work in secondary forests and on Christmas Island: what does it mean for a species or a landscape to persist despite human disturbance?

I followed the rhythms of the township: a mother sloth bear and her cubs moving through half-built houses, livestock owning the roads, farmers using songs and drumbeats to negotiate daily life with wildlife. Here, coexistence is practical rather than idealistic. Even ancient cave paintings gesture toward animals as participants in shared histories.

Hampi reveals that human intention cannot contain life. In the gaps between ruins and rituals, new stories of persistence and adaptation continue to unfold.