Mumbai: A metropolis in transition

A new show featuring the works of Sameer Kulavoor and Ritesh Uttamchandani among other artists, showcases the ‘sense of arrival’ the city offers to urban migrants

Metro metamorphosis: (Clockwise from top left) Works by Peter Bialobrzeski; Pallon Daruwala; Sameer Kulavoor; and Ritesh Uttamchandani

This weekend, if you visit Gallery MMB in Kala Ghoda, you’ll rediscover Mumbai as the city of dreams, arrival and dystopia through visuals and text. These, however, aren’t the oft-seen images that romanticise south Mumbai or frame the street vendors. In a drawing, an aspiring actor sitting in a cafe stares at his phone, probably waiting for that casting call. Photographs document the activities in the nooks of northern suburbs. Research extracts offer insights into what redevelopment of clusters like Dongri and Bhendi Bazaar would mean for Mumbai’s socio-economic fabric.

Documenting migration

The works are part of

The Shifting City , an exhibition curated by theorist and critic Kaiwan Mehta with The Architecture Foundation, Mumbai (AF), and produced by the Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai. Opening today, the show marks the Mumbai chapter of a travelling exhibition titled

Arrival

City , based on the German Pavilion at 2016 edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale.

This show reflects the main exhibition’s theme of migration. “An entry into Mumbai gives you the feeling of having arrived and getting an opportunity to be part of the global social, financial and cultural system,” says Mehta. “The exhibition plays on ‘arrival’ as used in modern slang but not through the typical narratives of hawkers or slum neighbourhoods. It captures the city in its moment of transition through the lens of educated, middle-income groups migrating to the city, the spaces they engage with and the development of northern suburbs.”

On display will be new works developed for this exhibition by visual artist and designer Sameer Kulavoor, journalist Rachel Lopez who has worked with text, and photographer and journalist Ritesh Uttamchandani. In his sketches, Kulavoor depicts ‘arrival city’ in the context of people associated with the film industry who frequent cafés around Versova, Juhu and Bandra, as well as IT professionals who work in Malad and Goregaon and visit malls in the area. His drawings are observational and often created on the spot. “Within these spaces, I was drawn to the most mundane activities. Like, what happens at the security check at a mall, or what people do when they are on escalators,” says the artist.

Through a 100 images, Uttamchandani offers “an alternative Mumbai darshan” that captures the unplanned character of the northern suburbs and the engagement of migrants with these spaces. The new works are built upon his existing archive that includes references to south Mumbai too. “For the show, we first created a linear structure of the images from south to north Mumbai and then, twisted the sequences to replicate the sense of a fractured skyline.”

The exhibition also includes existing works from artist Sudhir Patwardhan, photographers Pallon Daruwala (works themed on high-rises) and Peter Bialobrzeski. The extracts are from research projects and books Extreme Urbanism IV: Looking at Hyper Density – Dongri, Mumbai (Harvard University) and State of Housing: Aspirations, Imaginaries, and Realities in India (UDRI and AF).

The Shifting City opens today at Gallery MMB, K Dubash Marg, Kala Ghoda and will be ongoing until May 26, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. (closed on Sundays and public holidays)