Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum presents 'Limits of the Town...', a solo exhibition by artist Sameer Kulavoor. The exhibition is curated by Tasneem Zakaria Mehta, and will be on view from 13th November to 28th December, 2025.

The exhibition ‘Limits of the Town’ takes as its starting point the history of Bombay Fort, demolished in the 1860s, and the shifting notions of boundaries and urban forms within the city. Always welcoming, layers of migrations have produced new and hybrid typologies distinct to the city. The ‘limits’ are continually redrawn, as land is reclaimed, infrastructure projects extend the shoreline, and suburbs merge into the metropolitan core, inviting reflection on what a continuously evolving city means for its inhabitants.

Kulavoor was invited to interrogate the Museum’s archive of urban plans, objects and dioramas showing the development of the city and to explore the intersection of its form and fabric. Having closely witnessed and documented the rapid transformation of urban surroundings and the architectural language emerging in India in the 90's (resulting from economic liberalisation and the internet boom), Kulavoor’s innate approach is to constantly note and understand the impact that time, culture, politics, and socio-economic conditions have wrought on our visible and invisible surroundings.

Architecture is considered the mother of the Arts – an aphorism attributed to the eminent architect Frank Llyod Wright. He further stated, “Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilisation”. Kulavoor’s works search for that soul in our ordinary, fragmented and chaotic urban landscape. In giving it a visual semiotic form he elevates everyday mundane elements into indexical statements. Canopies, Chajjas, Columns are converted into visual poetry and become idioms that celebrate strength and resistance. Walls seek to engage rather than divide. In reconfiguring their formal syntax, Kulavoor collapses their difference.
Kulavoor's work lies at the confluence of art, graphic design and illustration that has taken the form of paintings, murals, books, zines, prints and objects. He is an alumnus of Sir J.J. Institute of Applied Art, an institution which shared an umbilical and historical link with the Museum.

The exhibition is supported by TARQ