Within the industrial Coir Godown at Aspinwall House, Birender Yadav has created a raw, immersive space with his site-specific installation, Only the Earth Knows Their Labour. Lined with bricks, he transports visitors to a kiln devoid of workers. Yet in their very absence, we sense their presence. There are hand-pressed bricks bearing the imprints of workers’ palms as well as ceramic sculptures and terracotta casts of folded clothes, tools and other implements. All of which speak of physical toil, migratory lives and impermanence.

Yadav has long been preoccupied with the lives of seasonal, migrant workers, especially those working in the brick kilns in Mirzapur in the state of Uttar Pradesh. For him,

the brick kiln is not just a place of work, but a space inscribed with the weight of human effort, migration, and survival. Unlike industrialised factories, the kiln is a site where labour is deeply physical, etched into the earth and pressed into every brick. The land absorbs and remembers this labour, yet remains silent, and this exhibition seeks to give form to that memory.

The opportunity to exhibit at Kochi provided the impetus for Yadav to move from a documentary mode of essaying his concerns to a more interpretive language. Elaborating on this new turn in his practice he says, 'The core experiment is embodying labour's traces directly within material and space; it does not attempt to speak for the workers, but instead engages with the land, the objects they touch, and the structures they shape.' In doing so Yadav’s installation is a powerful reminder of the pitiful plight of landless, bonded labourers caught in a web of exploitation.