A powerful new exhibition on the forest residents of Aarey

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A Forest in the City: Living within Sanjay Gandhi National Park/Aarey Colony in Mumbai tells stories of the struggles, triumphs and culture of people living in a forest within a metropolis.The exhibition at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalay’s Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation gallery (till 17 July) is an outcome of a three-year research project at Mumbai’s Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environmental Studies (KRVIA) in collaboration with Pani Haq Samiti, an NGO that advocates universal access to water. The project explores issues of access to infrastructure by poor and marginalised communities within SGNP and Aarey Colony.It is a collaboration between different institutions, activists, community groups and individuals, including architects, urbanists, anthropologists, activists, community members, cultural practitioners and archivists, led by Rohan Shivkumar, a teacher at KRVIA, and his colleague Lisa Bjorkman, a political ethnographer and anthropologist.Also read: Lounge Loves: Palestinian content creators, Psych on Netflix and moreA Forest in the City tells us how we have made misfits of the people who live there, protecting and nurturing the forest while we strip them of their basic human rights.

It’s a way to “begin to consider questions concerning the categories of ‘folk’, ‘contemporary’, ‘research’ and ‘tribal’ art," says Shivkumar.It was in 1984 that the government extended the boundaries of Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP), rendering thousands of tribals and non-tribals living here as illegal inhabitants. Over 10 years later, in 1997, the court recognised their rights and ordered the government to rehabilitate them, says Sitaram Shelar, one of the founders of the Pani Haq