Sudhir Patwardhan's Mumbai is Unrecognisable-And All Too Familiar

His new travelling show 'Cities: Built, Broken' is his most searing work

I wrote about the Holocaust imagery in this painting.

I recently attended Sudhir Patwardhan’s show at Jehangir Art Gallery. The space was much smaller than the artist’s retrospective I had seen at the NGMA a few years earlier titled Walking Through Soul City. It couldn’t even hold all his paintings—hopefully the works will have more breathing space in Kochi’s Darbar Hall when they are displayed there later this year. Many of them have already been sold, but on the condition that the artist can display them in two more shows.

Even in 2019 at the NGMA, Patwardhan’s work reflected the empathy of Mubaikars, but post the pandemic, our favourite city-based artist sees only despair and the demolition of dreams in faces of Mumbai’s residents. Like the reality, Patwardhan’s Mumbai is a soulless construction site.

Here’s the piece I wrote for the Hindu. In case you prefer a link: https://archive.ph/mITxb

The yellows and browns of trains have given way to the purples of Narendra Modi’s era. There’s destruction everywhere—destruction of small businesses, of trees and the wider environment, of people’s homes, lives and people’s ways of living. Armoured vehicles lurk in the shadows of train stations and under bridges. Not only do Mumbaikars need to negotiate the daily grind, they must also watch the world being torn apart by petulant men. Patwardhan says he’s trying to imagine what ordinary people living through this period must feel. The pain and despair and pointlessness of our cities’ development marathon captured in his works make you hold your breath.

There’s a painting of a Muslim man, watching his home being demolished, the artist’s response to growing divisions and a reflection of how the Indian state is responding to minorities in the present moment.

In this painting he starts with a central sketch of an Ajanta caves gate that takes him on a stunning visual journey through Ambedkar’s Mumbai.

He’s angry with Israel, a country that he believes hasn’t learned any lessons from its own history and empathises with his fellow artists in Gaza, who must watch a lifetime of work be destroyed. This painting reflects what his studio might look like if he were an artist in Gaza.

Oh yes, and here’s an image of me interviewing the artist :)