Tandel works with Habur stone in the Ancestors series (2026), a fossiliferous material from Jaisalmer that was once an ancient seabed, to cast oil pipes and marine life-forms in cooling, mottled rock — drawing a sharp poetics between petrocapitalist extraction and the Koli community's embattled relationship with the coastline. The stone becomes a monument to an erased ocean, connecting the geological history of the Rajasthani desert with the ecological memory of Mumbai's shores.

Featuring an Elysia Hirasei sea slug on the carved box from oceanic fossil stone, the box contains ammonites and photosynthesizing cell coins: a criticism of oil wars, highlighting solar energy over destruction caused by petrocapitalism militarisation.