Untitled: Akash Halankar

A lover of typography and illustration, Akash Halankar is a graphic and visual artist based in Mumbai. The artist uses the challenging space of the staircase as a gateway to creating a body of work that comments on the complexities that arise from rapid urbanisation in the city of Mumbai. By using tints of neon, he uses the text “What goes up, comes down” as a juncture to comment on the paradoxes that have come up in the city’s socio-economic infrastructure after 1991’s economic reforms.

The phrase acts as a starting point to initiate discussions on the stark divide between rural and urban, rich and poor, all of which create an uneven landscape that makes up contemporary Mumbai.