Way of the Forest is a traveling edition of the arts festival Colomboscope that converges artistic pathways to rekindle knowledge of interdependence, custodianship, and restorative practices across rainforests, wilderness, mountain cultivations, and riverine wetlands.

Taking over Galleries 1 and 2 inside 421 Arts Campus in Abu Dhabi, the exhibition invites deschooling – moving from the curriculum of plunder, reckless supremacy and extinction, to embrace active listening beyond the human sensorium.

The forest as a lexicon holds a plenitude of meaning across languages: Aaranya in Tamil (ஆரண்யா) and Sanskrit relating to a sanctuary, vana (වන) in Sinhala. Bonn, Jongol, and Aranno in Bangla, guṁ in Nepal Bhasa, tēṁ in Tamu—each evoking distinct states of being, emotions, disparate imagination, and a palpable climate. This exhibition is an intricate study of our eroding ecological histories, of lost environmental wisdoms, monstrous developmental agendas, and ghosts of extraction. It endeavors to plot legacies of colonization of resources and minds that operate in disguise. Within mutating landscapes, artists question who owns forest lands, who gets displaced, and who is restricted from sites marked for conservation.