From Deonar’s trash hills to gallery walls: an exhibition that forces Mumbai to look at what it throws away

The exhibition brings together nine young artists, all students or recent graduates of The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda

MUMBAI: Deonar, Mumbai’s vast dumping ground in the eastern suburbs, usually enters public consciousness as data: tonnage figures, court deadlines, drone shots of smouldering hills. It is seen from above, discussed from a distance, and forgotten just as quickly. At Priyasri Art Gallery’s Necropolis of Remains, presented during Mumbai Gallery Weekend, those same mountains of waste are stripped of abstraction. They are rendered intimate, human and disturbingly alive, asking viewers not what Deonar is, but what the city chooses not

Mumbai, India - Jan. 11, 2026: Author Saumya Roy, during a conversation at Priyasri Art Gallery, Kathiwada City House, as part of Mumbai Gallery Weekend, ahead of the exhibition “Necropolis of Remains” inspired by Roy’s book Mountain Tales in Mumbai, India, on Sunday, January 11, 2026. (Photo by Anshuman Poyrekar/Hindustan Times) (Anshuman Poyrekar/HT Photo)