Mumbai, someone said, will never be completed. Even now, the city is constantly being rebuilt, reshaped, and reimagined. One look at the works on the display of DAG’s upcoming exhibition, Bombay Framed: People, Memory, Metropolis, and you realise this phenomenon is neither new nor recent. A prelude to the second edition of the travelling festival, The City As a Museum, Mumbai (it will open on March 7), the exhibition taps into works across the mediums of artworks, archival photographs, and memories to trace the journey of the metropolis from its early days as a coastal hamlet. The showcase also grows from a series of smaller capsule exhibitions hosted by DAG over the years.
Flora Fountain, Bombay, Baburao Sadwelkar (1928-2000), 1951
Author Dr Gyan Prakash (inset) calls it, “a visual archive of Mumbai.” “They register the city’s history through the imaginative medium of art, and underscore the ways in which artistic practices are integral to the making and experience of urban space,” he explains. The city is not just something the artists represent visually, but also their medium. “It becomes a way of thinking. In depicting it, they are also reimagining it,” Prakash says.
Bombay from Malabar Hill By Night, unidentified artist, c 1950
These observations will also be part of the book, Bombay Framed that will be available for readers at the gallery. With essays from Pheroza Godrej on the City as Canvas, Rachel Dwyer on Cinema and the City, Preeti Chopra on the Colonial Urban Form, and Mustansir Dalvi on Bombay, Open City, among others, the work also taps into the multiple dimensions of the metropolis.
At Chowpatty Beach, MV Dhurandhar (1867-1944), c 1934
Ashish Anand, CEO, DAG, adds, “Over the years, our exhibitions in Mumbai have sought to foreground the city’s rich culture of collaboration, networks and associations that have shaped its distinctive identity. Bombay Framed, along with the latest edition of our travelling arts festival, The City as a Museum, continues this engagement.”
Untitled, Abalal Rahiman (1860-1931), 1921
The fact that the artworks also span mediums, genres, and styles, only makes obvious the thread running through it all. From MV Dhurandhar’s visuals of the crowds at Chowpatty to Henri Cartier Bresson’s photographs of the age, they evoke the familiar idealism of struggle, and optimism for a future. The volume editor sees it differently.
(From left) Nutan, Raj Kapoor and Nargis, Dev Anand, JH Thakker (1923-2003), silver gelatin prints on paper, 1950-60s. Pics Courtesy/DAG
“To me, what is most striking is their engagement with the city. It is embedded in them. Mumbai is a hard place to live in, and to represent, and engage with it visually, requires a creative imagination,” Prakash sums up. Zara hatke, zara bach ke, yeh hai Bambai meri jaan, as the iconic song goes.
FROM February 22 to April 11; 11 am to 7 pm
AT DAG, The Taj Mahal Palace, Apollo Bunder.
