Swati Goel strips Mumbai of its postcard imagery in her new solo exhibition

Bombay has a way of staying with you. Long after the train has pulled into the station, the rain has stopped or the crowds have thinned along Marine Drive, something of the city remains: its urgency, its noise, its unexpected tenderness. For artist Swati Goel, that residue forms the starting point of emotions of (BOM)bay, her seventh solo exhibition at the Nehru Centre in Mumbai.

Swati Goel brings emotions of (BOM)bay exhibition to Nehru Centre

Goel has deliberately moved away from the visual shorthand through which the city is usually represented. “I don’t try to paint Bombay as a collection of recognizable symbols,” she says. The train, the sea and the rain may appear, but they arrive as fragments rather than subjects, carrying the quality of recollection. “I wanted to remove the landmarks so that the city could emerge through colour, texture, gesture, and atmosphere.”

That distinction matters to Goel because Bombay, in her experience, cannot be reduced to what it looks like. “For me, Bombay is not an image you can recognize immediately. It is a feeling you recognize only after you have lived in it.”

Even the title holds this tension. Mumbai is the city’s present-day name; Bombay, for Goel, carries another register. “ ‘Mumbai’ is the city as it is named today. ‘Bombay,’ for me, is the feeling of the city, slightly rushed, hybrid, restless, and nostalgic.” The abbreviation “BOM” becomes another visual element, with its associations with Bombay, the bay and the airport code, sitting somewhere between language and memory.

The paintings grew from small encounters rather than a single defining experience. Goel recalls being surrounded by people and still feeling alone, followed almost immediately by an unexpected act of generosity from a stranger. “The city can exhaust you and hold you at the same time.” That contradiction runs through her understanding of Bombay.

The sea offers another kind of pause. Goel speaks of sitting at Marine Drive long after sunset, when the city’s momentum seems to loosen. “You just can’t help but feel the ‘sukoon’ at that time!!” It is this movement between exhaustion and release, loneliness and belonging, that enters her canvases.

Goel describes herself as both witness and participant. The city has altered her perspective while becoming part of her artistic evolution. “The strokes carry my own restlessness, memories, attachments, and sense of belonging on the canvas.”

Emotions of (BOM)bay ultimately asks what remains when a city is stripped of its postcard imagery. In Goel’s hands, Bombay survives as atmosphere: accumulated encounters, fleeting intimacies and the particular feeling of belonging to a place that can overwhelm you one moment and make room for you the next.

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