Limits Of The Town

Title: Limits of the Town
Medium: Soft body and Fluid acrylic paints on Fabriano acid-free paper
Size: 179 x 43 inches
4 parts
Year: 2025

Kulavoor’s solo show ‘LIMITS OF THE TOWN…’ at the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, curated by Tasneem Zakaria Mehta, takes it’s name from the title of this work.

All photographs by Anil Rane, courtesy of Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum.

Text from BDL Museum:

Limits of the Town takes as its starting point the history of Bombay Fort, demolished in the 1860s, and the shifting notions of boundaries within the city. Referring to the archival drawings of early Bombay maps from the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum collection, Sameer Kulavoor began postulating this work. His other references included Shells from the Sands of Bombay; being my recollections and reminiscences, 1860-1875 , by Wacha, Dinshaw Edulji. Dinshaw Edulji lived in the Bombay Fort and witnessed its demolition. The book survives as the only document vividly describing experienced life inside the fort in detail.

At the center of the work is the image of the fort itself, from which structures and motifs spill outward, suggesting the expansion and fragmentation of the city over time. In the case of Bombay, the ‘limits’ are continually redrawn, as land is reclaimed, infrastructure projects extend the shoreline, and suburbs merge into the metropolitan core. The panels of Limits of the Town mirror this sense of perpetual extension: a work that could continue endlessly, just as the city itself resists containment.

The work draws on another archival reference which is the stone marker inscribed ‘Limits of the Town of Bombay,’ which once stood at the fort’s edge and was subsequently moved several times as the city grew and eventually found its place in Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum. With this reference, Kulavoor hints at the nature of the city’s growth which is limitless, hence the title. Interestingly, the multiple panel nature of the work also alludes to this idea where the artist kept adding panels to the work, finishing at four panels. Kulavoor adds, “But the dilemma was that, you know, where do you stop? And there is really no limit or so it seems.” The work engages with questions of how cities evolve—what remains, what disappears, and how far their boundaries can stretch.