“We constitute 80 percent of India’s population which adds up to at least 800 million people who don’t find their faces amongst those in curatorial focus at exhibitions and biennales. Our aesthetic is versatile from our traditional vocations as village bards, dancers, cobblers, weavers and blacksmith. I bring with me those elements to a community with whom I wish to talk. Our stories need to be heard,” says Prabhakar Kamble, curator of ‘Golpitha: A Namdeo Dhasal Memoriam’ currently showing at the Art & Soul gallery in Worli.

Enthralling as it is, the empty room feels heavy with conversations, celebratory shouts and agitating sounds from the people drawn on charcoal grey canvases and framed acrylic paintings that cover the walls as well as portrayed in ceramic installations positioned on the floor. Whether it was the woman with a Dholak partaking in community rituals or the man sitting on a commode, engaged in deep thought with a cigarette in his hand — the depictions are familiar scenes from the city that are many a times overlooked and dismissed as unimportant.