View from the top

Sitting in a 16-storey building, artist Anjana Mehra has a bird8217;s-eye view of the city. 8220;Things appear like a checker board, which is why I moved towards a more abstract expression this time.

Anjana Mehra8217;s Pipe Dreams makes the city her muse

Sitting in a 16-storey building, artist Anjana Mehra has a bird8217;s-eye view of the city. 8220;Things appear like a checker board, which is why I moved towards a more abstract expression this time. The city has always been my muse, I have been chronicling its change,8221; says Mehra who spent time in the Himalayas ever since she was 12 and was shocked when she returned to the city at the age of 27.

8220;Change is inevitable, but I do believe that the kind of change we are seeing in Mumbai is disturbing,8221; says Mehra. Her solo Pipe Dreams have moved from the spacious Kitab Mahal in Fort to the intimate space of Pundole near Flora Fountain.

The canvases capture smoking chimneys and the geometric grids of high-rise buildings that have cropped up all over the city. A poetic offering comes in the form of a small bouquet of wild flowers that are found growing out of the pipes and on the pavement. The iron girders of the Bandra-Worli Sea Link have also inspired some of the canvases that Mehra has painted with mixed media. 8220;I have used black sand powder as it8217;s a popular building material and it also symbolises the sheen and lure of the city,8221; says Mehra. Having acknowledged that the migration from towns and villages to the city is inevitable in today8217;s economy, however she would have ideally liked for it to have been a different story. 8220;Some of the materials that the buildings are made of are not at all conducive to the city. Like the plexi-glass at the Victoria Terminus now called Chhatrapati Shivaji. It is not at all favourable to the climate of the city which is hot and dusty. Our architects and town planners blindly ape European designs that are more suited to their climate,8221; says Mehra who has also included two installations in her show.

A microwave oven, painted silver and a refrigerator, touched in the same hue, are two sound installations. Open the doors of the fridge and the microwave, a recording of the city8217;s cacophony plays at a high volume. After one gets over the shock of the sound, one becomes aware of the honking horns and chattering of trains.

8220;We take all this noise for granted, but when we listen to it in isolation in a gallery like this, we become aware of how much noise pollution one is constantly subjected to,8221; says Mehra. While she offers no solutions in her canvases, the environment-aware artist laments the future of the toxic city.