Everyday India

Everyday India

When Srila Chatterjee invited us to do a show about graphic art and books, we got thinking about how to approach this exciting proposition. We looked deeper and tried to identify that unique aspect about our surroundings, our city, our country and culture that drives our work and varied practices - as independent artists and as Bombay Duck Designs. In a land with a burgeoning population, hundreds of languages and dialects, a multiverse of gods of all shapes, forms and sizes, and wide social and economic differences, if we had to pick one aspect that defines our visual culture, it had to be multiculturalism and plurality.

With that lens and with great help from our team at Bombay Duck Designs, friends and colleagues, we present - EVERYDAY INDIA - an illustrated survey of printed and painted graphic design samples, designed in India for homegrown products, services and properties. It is a collection of iconic, nostalgic, familiar, unfamiliar, accidental and intentional graphic design. These designs scream for our attention in gullies and high streets, in malls, supermarkets and kirana shops, on screens and in print. EVERYDAY INDIA looks at design beyond the confines of the ‘file dimensions’. The spillage of ‘graphic art/design’ onto the streets - a place where the formal and informal meets. It is also an enquiry into where design ends and art begins and vice versa and the overlaps between the two.

Words Sameer Kulavoor & Zeenat Kulavoor