Artist Natalia Rodriguez along with URBZ’s Shyam Kanle and the kids of the Dharavi Shelter have produced this photo novel, which is the first of a series. The story was entirely invented by the kids. This fiction says as much about their reality as about their creativity .
In this series, the kids speak about their neighbourhood and lives. They tell us how Dharavi is anancient place that is surprisingly able to rethink and transform itself again and again
Giving a voice to the kids is urgent and inevitable. Whether it is to talk about communal tension, the arbitrariness of the state or the daily struggles of Mumbaikars. They are not only our future, but also our bright present!
Cutouts from URBZ’s mural at the Uneven Growth exhibition opening at the MAK Museum in Vienna.
Our exhibition Koliwada Charcha was in the news (Asian Age)
What began as a regular jostling and tugging of the idea in a brainstorm soon took off as an imaginative exercise that encouraged creative and personal readings of the concept and the making of its visual expressions.
Cities and graphic narratives have a special connection. So much so that landscapes from an artist’s imagination can infect urban practitioners who may want to translate them into concrete entities.