Renaissance Idiot's ramblings

  Poster for the Mumbai Urban Art Festival 2022-23 by St+art Foundation retrieved from paytminsider.com Recently I had the fortune to visit the Mumbai Urban Art Festival 2022-23. This was the second year of the festival being hosted in Sassoon Docks, Mumbai. Sassoon Docks is a fishing port for the koli fishing community, which also includes a bustling fish market, fish related industries and car garages on the site. The art festival is beautifully integrated in the negative spaces of the site, existing in the voids of the daily. The art installations took visual-based forms, where the clear bias for Instagram bloggers was apparent. The installations retained their social message along with their visual flair. The festival in its nature is open-to-all. However, what was common to see an overarching majority of teen to young adult audience who were extremely eager to take a photograph for their social media platforms and covering as much ground as possible in the shortest amount of time.

 Gun House as built in 1960, copyright Charles Correa Associates, courtesy of Charles Correa Foundation * After wrapping up my fellowship at the Charles Correa Foundation in Panaji, Goa, I needed a time-off to think about what I was going to do next. After listening to about a hundred different versions of my future from everyone around me, and disagreeing with all of them, I returned back home only to quickly elope to Gujarat for a well-earned time off. Amongst the places I got to visit & the people I got to spend time with, one experience took centre stage for me. Working on the Correa Archive, I had developed a good understanding of Correa’s work. One such was the Gun House, and knowing I will be so close to it on this trip; I had to make it a must to go and see it. The idea of the Gun House, from its name, shape, to the stories of its current fate brought tremendous interest to my mind. It is rare to see a work of a significant architect that goes through such massive degree