In the Spring of 2023, Sudeep was Writer and Photographer in Residence at the Nirox Sculpture Park in South Africa. Red is inspired by the landscape and the environs of Nirox — simultaneously wild and tamed – as the Park is located in South Africa’s highveld, which is considered the ‘Cradle of Humankind’. This UNESCO World Heritage Site occupies 180 square miles, and its socio-paleo-geological landscape contains a complex system of limestone caves, believed to be the home to the largest concentration of human ancestral remains anywhere in the world.

But Red is equally about India and indeed about the world — about the borderless land, skies and oceans that connect us. It is about the secrets of dolomite and about our ‘intimate skies’. It is about the community of artists (present and absent) engaging through intricate works of ekphrasis. It is about the politics of colour, language, body — about the complex neural transmissions that link each cell and sub-cell.

Red extends and builds upon Sen’s last book, Anthropocene — pushing the debate wider and deeper. It is intellectually stringent, tightly wrought, amniotic, visceral, raw — yet poised, subtle, choral, and always elegantly crafted — a tour de force.