Maps for a Migrant Heart

From the complexities of the self and personal identity to the larger world we call home, Bihar-born artist Naresh Kumar's novel work is at once introspective and political

- By SHAIKH AYAZ

By the time you stand before Naresh Kumar’s Bombay Rituals, you’re already engulfed. At his solo exhibition Act of Republic at Chemould Prescott Road, it stretches across the wall in a sweep of 484 miniature drawings, each made on a scrap of the now-defunct Yellow Pages telephone directory. From a distance, it reads as a live map of a metropolis in perpetual motion; up close, it fractures into intimate vignettes of Mumbai’s working class; its stevedores, mill workers, hawkers, and commuters.