Painting is a form of prayer for the Bhil, one on India's predominant tribes. Every year, they paint their walls with 'pithoras', as offerings to the goddess. Illustrations from everyday life are painted with neem twig-brushes and natural pigments, on a fresh layer of clay and cowdung, in complex dotted patterns.
Beginning in 1670, Bombay Imagined: An Illustrated History of the Unbuilt City tells the story of 200 unrealised urban visions — aspirations of an evolved metropolis boasting everything from humane housing and expanded parks to sanitation systems and more. Ideas that never saw the light of the day are richly illustrated with archival drawings, contemporary speculations and artistic overlays, illuminating long-lost futures from the city’s never-before-seen past.
Bombay Imagined is a testimony to the audacious dreams of city-lovers, a chronicle of untold narratives across centuries and an insight into the tides that have shaped present-day Mumbai.
Since his move to Mumbai in 2007, author Robert Stephens has cultivated a passion for rare and second-hand books with a focus on the city. What began as a meandering journey through archival texts to quench an innate curiosity transformed in 2014 when he opened the Professional Papers on Indian Engineering, published in 1869. Sandwiched between countless projects from the 19th century, Arthur Crawford's grand (albeit unrealised) plan for a 400-acre park at Mahalaxmi transcended the mundane aspirations of his contemporaries, despite being relegated to the pages of history for more than 150 years. The unexpected discovery ignited a seven-year-long exploration, leading Robert to scour nearly five dozen archives, libraries and studios around the world in search of radical ideas for Mumbai that never came to fruition.
Popularly known as Gond art, this genre is more accurately the ‘Jangarh Kalam’, after Jangarh Singh Shyam, the Pardhan Gond artist from Madhya Pradesh, central India. In this collection, the artist moves beyond established imagery, to focus on on his people's role as custodians of nature.
Yusuke Asai’s first solo exhibition in India, at ARTISANS’, Sentient Beings Dissolve, is born from a longing to connect deeply with nature, and through it, with a global universe. It taps a primal consciousness that resonates with indigenous arts around the world.
For this exhibition, Asai is inspired by the word Tokeru meaning “dissolve”, to express the interconnectedness of all living beings. As they die, they break down, and fuse with one another. This poignant awareness of the cycle of life – dying, dissolving, breaking down, fusing, merging, and then regenerating, comes from a deeply personal realization through the pandemic of recent years.
Yusuke Asai grew up in hyper-urban Tokyo, yearning to connect with the natural world. Today, he uses soil from the earth as his chosen medium. A self-taught artist, Asai’s “earth paintings” share a tribal-primitive aesthetic. They come alive with natural beings, fantastical plants, animals, humans, and imaginary hybrids, that morph dynamically in Asai’s very act of creation. They emerge nested, one within the other, like micro ecosystems within a larger universe.
