Kulavoor & Kulavoor: Charting the idea of India through graphic design

“Home grown... and home designed,” Sameer piped in, referring to the fact that all the designs that have made it to the walls of the design gallery 47A, in Kotachiwadi, have been made in India whether by nameless designers or by design consultants

A new exhibition of works by Sameer and Zeenat, the siblings behind Bombay Duck Designs, answers the eternal question of why we are like this only

The Kulavoors delve into the Indian ethos in other works that form part of the exhibition. The siblings also created a series of six larger hand painted collages titled ‘Storefronts and signages’ that present an amalgamation of establishments that jostle for space on urban streets across cities. (HT PHOTO)

“We want the viewer to know that when they walk in and they don’t see a Maggi or a Nestle design up on the wall, it’s because we’ve focused only on those products that are home grown,” said 34-year-old Zeenat Kulavoor, whose show, ‘Everyday India’, opened on July 16. Co-conceptualised and co-curated with her 39-year-old brother Sameer, it presents a collection of works — digital illustrations, hand-painted collages, digital collages and flip books with photographs— of peculiar and unique graphic designs from around India.

“Home grown... and home designed,” Sameer piped in, referring to the fact that all the designs that have made it to the walls of the design gallery 47A, in Kotachiwadi, have been made in India whether by nameless designers or by design consultants.

What you will find instead is Boroline (an ‘Ayurvedic Antiseptic cream’ that was manufactured by a Bengali entrepreneur in pre-Independence India), Dabur Chyawanprash (a concoction manufactured by a 138-year-old company which many of us were force fed for its apparent immunity-building qualities), Anjol (a herbal powder popular in Tamil Nadu, Anjol Aluppu Marunthu manufactured in Tamil Nadu promises to “rejuvenate you from all pain and exhaustion!”), Pammi Dant Manjan (another herbal powder for tooth pain, more popular in north India) and Bufin soap strips (“India’s longest selling soap since 1972!” according to the product’s tagline), which are part of the 324 prints of products, advertisements, flyers or stickers, collected by the Kulavoor siblings through the course of their three-month research.

“For this, we took the help of a lot of friends and family who sent us products from their states. The whole collection together shows the range of graphic design examples prevalent in our daily lives,” Zeenat explained.

Walking along these 10X 10” digital illustrations printed out on Inkjet print on matte paper feels like being immersed in a sea of Indianness: an oil bottle simply branded Julley [Ladakhi for hello] stares at you from one wall, a sticker of a boy and a dog, titled ‘Do Dost’ [two friends], advertising inexplicably The New Jehangir Mills of Bhavnagar glimmers from another, the cover of a Chacha Chaudhary comic catches your eye from one of the rows. The Kulavoors are not only highlighting the centrality of context in graphic design — the selling point of Chyanwanprash was not so much whether it was scientifically proven to boost immunity, but that its consumers thought it did because of its much-revered Ayurvedic antecedents — but also, the swiftness with which the product itself gets subsumed by its visual language. One need not read Boroline on the moss green tube to recognise it; its border design, colour palate and elephant motif serve as good enough visual cues.

For advertisers, graphic design serves a vital purpose; they also serve as a reflection of the socio-cultural ethos, explained Ambi Parameswaran, author of Nawabs, Nudes, Noodles: India Through 50 Years of Advertising.

“Andy Warhol was the first artist to see ‘art’ in everyday objects. Campbell Soup Cans and more were presented as art. In India we have had a great tradition of everyday products that have graphics as a part of their appeal. The match box labels. The magic lotions. The liquor bottles. The tooth powders. All of them have interesting graphic elements that when seen together can reflect a changing socio-cultural ethos of our great country,” Parameswaran said.

The Kulavoors delve into the Indian ethos in other works that form part of the exhibition. The siblings also created a series of six larger hand painted collages titled ‘Storefronts and signages’ that present an amalgamation of establishments that jostle for space on urban streets across cities. These are imaginary conjoinings and are not based on real streetscapes, but the visuals are so familiar, they look like something you’d encounter on a walk in Fort or Connaught Place in New Delhi. That’s also the point the Kulavoors are aiming to make.

“While one signage may be from Mumbai, one may be from say Shimla or Kolkata, the composition doesn’t feel off; it doesn’t feel weird,” Sameer said. “Graphic design is a great way to read into a culture, right? It’s like a different kind of anthropological material that you can delve into and find patterns,” Sameer said.

In another series of digital collages titled ‘Brand guides’, they explore the patterns visible in five categories of products and ephemera – surma and mehendi, country liquor bottles, Xerox shops, hand painted signs, and wedding cards. No matter where you go, Sameer explained, all Xerox shops will have a similar visual language – black on yellow. “This palate is kind of like an informal rule for this ecosystem. The shopkeepers around the country don’t have to use these colours, but this is ingrained in people’s minds. Tomorrow, if you see a shop with a red and white Xerox sign, you wouldn’t really trust it,” he said.

Design enables us to make connections, but design itself is not immune to social tastes or political mandates. For instance, in 2017, the Maharashtra government made it mandatory for shops to also have signboards in Devanagari and Marathi scripts, which led many shopkeepers to take down their existing signboards and make space for new ones.

Writer Khorshed Deboo addresses this in an essay, ‘Reading between the signs’ published in a book brought out by the curators and the gallery to accompany this exhibition. “Among the many elements that make up the visual fabric of the cityscape, signage is one that not only serves the dual purpose of communication and publicity, but is also capable of revealing stories and secrets if one peels back the layers. They are a defining part of the city’s character.”

“For a city that has seen waves of migrations over the centuries, Mumbai is bound by—and brimming with—a babel of languages and dialects from across the country, and a potpourri of invented lingos too. The cosmopolitan nature of the city’s inhabitants means that the social structure of a certain neighbourhood had to be kept in mind while designing signboards, contributing to the larger integration of design within the city,” Deboo writes.

The Kulavoors are keen to stress on this point: in a country as large and diverse as ours, which nevertheless has a shared understanding of design languages, the imposition of a singular form can never stick. “Our idea was to look at the richness and diversity of India through the lens of graphic design and make the point that you cannot impose a singular identity,” Sameer said.

Srila Chatterjee, who opened 47 A last year with gallerists Tara Lal and Mortimer Chatterjee, said this was the starting point of the Kulavoors’ project. “India, being a melting pot, truly exemplifies what it means when an assembly of local brands for a single product, from across the country, congregates on a table top together. The differences melt into a sameness even as the local quirks of each become a remarkable addition to a history that will never end.”

View the exhibition from till August 13 at 47 A, Kotachiwadi, Charni Road. Entry is free, and not all works are for sale.