Unreal city

An art installation featured a city made of plastic crates and plaster. This was the biggest draw in the exhibition; the aisles between the stacks of crates were packed with curious people peering at the small balconies and windows. Humans are openly curious about other lives when it becomes socially acceptable.

Was it patterned after a real city? I felt that it was. The long verandahs on each floor of a chawl, the dense living spaces with high rise towers looming over an aerogel of low-rise buildings, the dilapidated Art Deco buildings, all seemed to evoke Mumbai. The impression was solidified by a model of a slum, the towers of a temple and a mosque poking out of a ramshackle slope of shanties; the blue plastic resembled the ubiquitious blue tarpaulin that you see from the windows of an incoming flight.

Views of an installation at St+Art Mumbai 2023, Sassoon Docks