The Art of Looking Around with Sameer Kulavoor

Marine Lines with Raghu Karnad

Aug 12 2021 • 23 mins

How hard is it to see a city? Of course, it's pretty hard to not see a city – Mumbai especially, which has thousands of towers, dozens of flyovers, and an awesome number of people, and their homes, built at every scale and in every single available niche. But most of the time we spend in the city, we might be spending in our own heads, or focused on the traffic in front us, or just our phones. So to see the city around us might require more focus, or more creativity, than we assume.

In this episode, Raghu is joined by artist Sameer Kulavoor, who has spent his life looking at Mumbai, and then finding ways to help us see it through his art. He's made giant murals the size of a building, but he also likes sketching in a notebook the size of his hand. He's a painter, an illustrator, he designs commercial products, and he loves making zines. He talks about the changes he’s seen over decades and exploring the city through the small places and people that make Mumbai what it is.