Sunoj D’s works focus on the personal, political and the environmental situation he lives in (namely the modern rapid growth of his home-town Bangalore). The show titled "Between Land and Sky" looks at the effect of urban development and mass rural migration, in a context where city limits are being expanded whilst agricultural lands are being uprooted and trampled upon. This has in effect caused a visible spatial lifestyle change, and functions as the main theme behind all these works.
Sunoj’s painting shed light onto the experience of how a farmer loses his 'farmerness' and tries to cope with his new-founded identity as an urban dweller in his own locale where concrete constructions seem to have taken the place of his farming fields. Displaced and unhappy with the rapid urban development, the farmers in Sunoj’s works try to recreate their past and rural ideal.
In “The Urban Farmland project”, for example, one can see the reconstruction of farmlands within these urban spaces. It shows an experiment, growing rice in five hundred used and discarded 2 litre plastic bottles,(soft drink and mineral water bottles). Furthermore, this experiment it also functions as an element of design in the interiors of these urban living spaces, bringing farming into the homes, displacing it even further.
The series “We proudly plant trees” consists of six different situations concerning the planting of trees. Each tree, is planted for a purpose; be it political, educational, or social. The works show that although there is initially valid intention behind planting the trees, the trees soon become objectified, and their essence, and what they once represented becomes overshadowed by the farmer’s fight and struggle to find their place once again.
The works are powerful in their own right, providing an insight into the plight of the rural farmer, who has now unfortunately become a part of an urban diaspora – within his own country.