By Alika Khun
Mita Mahato is an individual with many descriptors. She is a self-described Comix artist, cut paper artist, collagist and former professor of English at the University of Puget Sound. On the evening of Feb. 26, Mahato returned to campus to discuss and promote her newest book, “Arctic Play.” The book is at once, many things, described as being “genre-defying” by reviewers for its ability to simultaneously be a collection of art pieces, poetry and a play. During the event, “Arctic Play: Poet & Artist Mita Mahato in Conversation” hosted by English Professor Priti Joshi, Mahato went into detail about her process of writing the book and the artist residency in the Arctic Circle that inspired it.
“Arctic Play” was a seven-year long endeavor that was published in Oct. 2024. It is split into three acts, each of which includes wildly different mediums. The book navigates the current climate crisis and its sorrows while largely focusing on themes of nature and existence. Mahato recalled her residency in the Arctic circle in 2017, which was her main source of inspiration for writing the book. She kept asking herself, “What do I want this art to do?” and, “Where is that sound coming from? Why is that whisper so loud? It rattled my senses. I had to let this place practice its agency on me — this place had agency. I had to commune with it, let it change me. Every place has agency on us. What do I want this art to do?”
As Mahato was reading excerpts from the poems within, she chuckled to herself while highlighting the pages that marked the beginning of each act. Each one features a cast list; the cast of Act I includes “grids, lines, shapes, words, paper, ink,” and “a passenger’s perspective.” Mahato intends for the play to be a cohesive story, even though the medium of each act varies. She wrote each act independently and skillfully combined them into a connected piece. Despite its unconventional narrative structure, the patchwork of a narrative creates a memorable experience.
Mahato smiled as she explained that she wanted “to emphasize experimentation and surprise, and to combine the organic with the synthetic.” Many of the art pieces in the background of each page include things such as plastic from grocery bags or even woven and braided strips of paper. “It’s a form of adjacency,” she said. “Sometimes I would do beach cleanups and then see pieces of kelp only to realize that it’s actually pieces of plastic and going like, ‘what’s this doing at the North Pole?’” Mahato detailed her process of creating each page and combining each piece of paper and ink, saying that each thinly-cut line of paper was intentional. “I was actually told to try using a scalpel for it!” She laughed, pointing to a page of the book where she had managed to cut out rounded curves from fragile tissue paper. “That way I could have more control over where I wanted to go.”
However, Mahato also highlighted that there was an uncontrolled element of her art, as she often placed words in a non-linear way so that they could be read differently by every viewer. Many page compositions are maze-like and placed into diagonals, making every read-through of each poem a wholly new experience, depending on which path the viewer chooses to take. Mahato excitedly bounced in her seat as she mentioned the different interpretations of her work made by her peers.
Mahato’s visit left the audience both inspired and intrigued, much like “Arctic Play” itself — a work that defies boundaries and invites readers to engage with it in a vast number of ways. Through her storytelling, artistry and reflections on the Arctic’s profound agency, Mahato encourages us to reconsider not only the role of art, but also our own relationship with the environment.