Shadow Boxes

By Hemant Basankar

This series is inspired by the tugs and pulls of daily life as seen and experienced in Mumbai’s cramped homes whose windows and balconies are often secured with grills to reclaim even a few inches of precious space. These dwellings, once the pride of middle-class neighbourhoods, now appear to be clumsily wedged between gigantic towers that are rapidly mushrooming across the cityscape. The drawings encapsulate a complex mishmash of humans, avians, animals and sundry objects that continue to coexist in inventive ways that make for strange and surreal juxtapositions.

Hemant Basankar is a Mumbai-based graphicdesigner and visual artist. He quit a career in advertising in the early noughties to co-found Bacteria Design, an interdisciplinary design studio. For many years now, he has straddled a dual path, with art being a parallel preoccupation. His leanings chiefly encompass the mediums of photography, paintings, drawings, printmaking and photobooks.