City in the docks

Jamuna bai, in her nine-yard sari, clutches her basket of paplet (pomfret) while gazing up at the collage of pictures on the Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT) building. She spots her neighbour’s mugshot, and proudly explains that they are kolis , an indigenous fishing community and one of the earliest residents of Mumbai. The collage is part of the Urban Art Festival, spread across Mahim East (Dharavi), Jindal Mansion, Churchgate Station (which ran from October 16 - 26), and Sassoon Docks — some of the “historic, yet forgotten spaces” of the metropolis. The Sassoon Dock Art Project — which runs till December 30 — puts the spotlight on the 142-year-old docks, its markets and natives.

The stench is hard to miss, and many visitors hold a kerchief over the nose. Surprisingly, one of the first few exhibits within the building plays up the odour. The aptly termed ‘Idea of Smell’, by Hanif Kureshi, co-founder and creative director of St+art India Foundation, explores the olfactory dimension of art through vocabulary. You walk through a room where words, suspended in the air, activate your memory. And just like that, Kureshi evokes a range of emotions — from the visceral with sentences such as ‘Perfume of your ex’, to the endearing with ‘Mom’s cooking’, to downright repulsive with ‘Vomit’.

Guido van Helten, an Australian artist, pays tribute to the first three kolis he met on his visit to the docks. He spent days getting to know these women, peeling prawns together and forging a bond despite language barriers. He covers three walls of a room with their photorealistic murals, which have been created with attention to detail — the frowning of the brow when lost in thought, the lowered gaze, as though accepting of the changing tides and modernisation that affected the community. These murals are a permanent exhibit, a homage to the docks and its history.

Helten isn’t the only foreigner; of the 29 works displayed here, 11 have been created by artists from Singapore, France, Mexico, Denmark, Austria, Spain and Australia.

Singaporean Tan Zi Xi has you walking in a room where plastic bottles, toys, spoons and such are suspended from the ceiling. The room is bathed in blue light to capture the ocean. ‘Plastic Ocean’ was created after Xi visited Dharavi. She sourced recycled plastic from ‘Asia’s largest slum’, which is also a small-scale industry hub, and turned it to art. Xi has viewers mulling on the environmental damage caused by non-biodegradable substance in our waterbodies.

As you take the steps from one floor to the next, words in neon embellish the walls: ‘What goes up, comes down’. A not-so-subtle warning to crony capitalism? Co-founder of St+art and festival curator, Giulia Ambrogi describes this work by Akash Raj Halankar as “a talking point for the stark contrasts in Mumbai”.

The ‘Ugly Truth’, by Sajid Wajid Sheikh, steps away from the narrative of the docks, and transports the viewer to a landfill in Turbhe. Sheikh says, “It’s about how easily we discard things. But just because they are out of sight, doesn’t mean they disappear.” He spent days with the ragpickers in Turbhe and came away with random trinkets — plastic containers, chipped ceramic, a television — and brought back what you thought was gone forever.

A gigantic skeleton of a fish hangs from the ceiling; on second glance, one notices that the bones have been replaced with miniatures of buildings. Arthat Collective’s ‘Dead Fish’ is perhaps one of the strongest reminders of the fast pace of the city, and the loss of traditions with time. If you have been in the city over the last decade, chances are this unpretentious piece will make you reflect on the reclamation projects, the Sea Link, and high-rises that have changed the skyline of ‘Bombay’. And a subsequent chipping away of a source of livelihood of the fisherfolk.

Most of the exhibits, though simple in appearance, stay with you long after you’ve left the docks behind. They push you to think about the immediate environment; the MbPT building, long abandoned, now has a coat of fresh paint and many visitors. But the art endeavour is not limited to Sassoon. It offers you a glimpse of the larger picture: how the changing face of Mumbai affects every Mumbaikar.

Kiran Mehta is a Mumbai-based journalist

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