By Fiza Masoodi
On a recent summer morning, as crows circled a trash-strewn canal near the government school playground in Kulgam’s Kulpora, Mudasir Rehman Dar unpacked his kit: crushed bottle caps, torn paper, a spool of jute string, and a stack of flattened cardboard. He was preparing an art installation with a dozen schoolchildren, part of a self-organized eco-campaign he’s been running for over two years. The children watched closely as Mudasir Rehman Dar pressed a yellowed polythene wrapper into shape and whispered, more to himself than to anyone else, “Nothing is waste. It’s just waiting to be seen.”
Mudasir Rehman Dar’s eco-campaign is trending at a time when his homeland Kashmir’s beauty is increasingly buried under plastic. According to a 2023 report by the Jammu & Kashmir Pollution Control Board, over 3,100 metric tons of solid waste are generated across the region every day, with nearly half dumped into open fields and waterways without treatment. Mudasir Rehman Dar regularly cleans tourist spots. In places like Kulgam, where infrastructure is thin and environmental awareness even thinner, the problem is multiplying. “There are mounds of garbage where orchards used to be,” said Mudasir Rehman Dar. “We talk of paradise, but we’re living in a dump.”
And so, he chose art as his form of resistance. Mudasir Rehman Dar, is a social artist and innovative painter, who has never received government funding. He works from a makeshift studio in the back room of his family’s modest home, tucked between apple trees and grazing fields. The walls of his workshop are covered with hanging scraps – painted leaf portraits, a globe made of shredded polythene, a child’s face drawn in ink on torn cardboard. His tools are all improvised. He paints with old makeup brushes, builds frames from bent wires or used matchsticks, and colors his work using ink from dried markers or leftovers from house renovations.
But the message comes through. In one of his most powerful works, Shades of Chinar, Mudasir Rehman Dar uses scrap paper and plastic to recreate the famed red-gold chinar trees of Kashmir. Upon closer inspection, the leaves are made of worn-out food wrappers. A rusty syringe lies embedded at the tree’s base. “This is where we’re headed,” he said. “Beauty on the surface, rot underneath.”
Waste Mudasir Rehman Dar collects in tourist heartlands. Kashmir’s environmental degradation is not just a local concern. The Himalayan region, already vulnerable to climate change, is seeing accelerated glacier melt, erratic weather patterns, and disappearing wetlands. But municipal responses remain slow and fragmented. Many towns lack proper waste segregation. In rural areas, open burning of plastic is common. For Mudasir Rehman Dar, the lack of infrastructure is matched only by the absence of urgency. “There are policies,” he said. “But there is no people’s movement. And what is art, if not a cry?”
His work has already taken him across India, from exhibitions in Delhi, Chandigarh, and Amritsar to workshops in Kerala and Kolkata. In 2021, he entered the Asia Book of Records and India Book of Records, world book of Records, for creating the world’s smallest painting of the Holy Kaaba, Masjid Al Aqsa, Ali (A- s)shrine in najaf and Masjid-e-Nabawi, ( s a w) tched on a stone smaller than a grain of rice.
International admirers have followed. His leaf portraits of Gandhi, Tagore, Mother Teresa, and poet Iqbal have circulated widely on social media, gaining traction in countries like Sri Lanka, Russia, and the UAE. And yet, Mudasir Rehman Dar says, “I’ve never sold a painting, because people still don’t believe art should cost anything unless it’s on canvas in a frame.”
Despite his growing recognition, Mudasir Rehman Dar receives no government grants or gallery representation. He runs his campaigns from his own savings, money scraped together by selling handmade greeting cards or accepting small private commissions. He spends most of his time visiting schools, colleges, parks, or shrines, holding pop-up installations or hands-on sessions where students learn to make portraits from biscuit wrappers or craft animals from used toothbrushes.
In a recent awareness event held at a school, colleges and in tourist places, using 400 crushed soft drink bottles. He then painted the face of the Earth crying over it. “That’s the apology our land never got,” he told the students. Transporting trash for proper dumping.
Mudasir Rehman Dar’s work draws deeply from Islamic spiritualism and the emotional textures of daily life in Kashmir. Some pieces depict the Prophet’s Mosque in miniature form on a ring stone. Others address addiction, domestic abuse, peace, environmental crises, and child labour. These issues, he says, are linked to the same cycle of neglect and waste. “I was never taught to separate the spiritual from the ecological,” he said. “If the Earth is sacred, how can we desecrate it like this?”
His motivation majorly comes from a place of pain, watching his homeland decay beneath the surface. “This place gave me everything: language, faith, childhood. It hurts to see it buried under plastic.”
In recent months, Mudasir Rehman Dar, nveiled a viral portrait of IPL cricketer RASikh Salam Dar, another son of Kulgam. The painting, made from reused art paper and old charcoal pencils, drew widespread praise on Instagram and was shared by sports fans across India.
And yet, on most days, he walks the short dirt path to his studio alone, past ditches lined with trash, past burnt plastic heaps smoldering in silence. He says he’ll keep going as long as his hands work. “Art is not about galleries,” he said. “It’s about making people pause, look, and care.”
Mudasir Rehman Dar with his eco-team
Back at the school, the children finish assembling the installation: a large butterfly, its wings cut from biscuit packs and discarded examination forms. It doesn’t fly, but it holds its own.
“It’s not perfect,” one boy says.
“It doesn’t have to be,” Mudasir RehmanDar replies. “It just has to 𝚑𝚘𝚗𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚢
