An exhibition of Adil Jussawalla's multilayered oeuvre swings between precision and spontaneity

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11-07-2025

Adil Jussawalla is primarily known as one of India's preeminent English-language poets. But few realise that there is much more to his work. Enlightenment from an Unlikely Envelope: Archives of Adil Jussawalla weaves together his photography, poetry, prose, sketches and scrapbooks to chart a cartography of an artist whose work navigates the interstices of personal history and urban modernity.
The exhibition, curated by Deeptha Achar and Chithra KS at The Guild Art Gallery in Alibaug, near Mumbai, emerges as an intellectually exhilarating exploration of Jussawalla's multilayered oeuvre.
The title, Enlightenment from an Unlikely Envelope, is a poetic invocation that captures the serendipitous discovery of meaning in the ephemeral – a hallmark of Jussawalla's aesthetic. Rather than presenting a sanitised or monumentalised narrative, the curators embrace the provisional, fragmented nature of the archive, displaying materials such as dog-eared sketchbook pages, handwritten manuscripts and faded photographs.
The curatorial vision ingeniously avoids linear biography, organising the exhibition into thematic constellations such as 'Sinhagad,' 'Ships,' 'Family,' 'Bombay' and 'Life and Books'. Jussawalla's photography, reproduced as archival digital prints on Ilford Smooth Gloss paper, forms the exhibition's core, spanning the 1950s to 1990s.
It includes images like 'Kalyan Gate Entrance', 'Sinhagad, 1953' and 'Worker, Mumbai, 1999'. The curators pair these with texts, creating synesthetic dialogues. For instance, Nine Poems on Arrival alongside Sinhagad images captures dislocation and return, while Ships Fastened to Water (Trying to Say Goodbye, 2011) complements 'The 'Sabarmoti' Seen En Route to Elephanta, 1955', reflecting on transience and rootedness.
The 'Bombay' section is a conceptual linchpin, offering a portrait of a city that is both muse and crucible for Jussawalla's work. Bombay is not merely a setting but a 'haunting presence' that permeates his photography, poetry, and prose; with works like 'Fire Temple, Bombay, 1967 ' and Castaway City (Shorelines, 2019) depicting decay and resilience.
Scrapbook pages, such as 'Comic Characters, 1948 ', reveal Bombay's hybrid visual culture – Bollywood posters, comics – shaping Jussawalla's aesthetic, as noted in his prose on 'The Wall of Illusions,' presenting Bombay as a palimpsest of histories.
His photographs from London ('St. Paul's, London, 1957/58'), Switzerland ('Storm, Switzerland '), and Iowa ('Adi Jussawalla, Nirmal Verma, and Bessie Head at IWP, Iowa City, 1977 ') are displayed alongside those from Bombay and Sinhagad, creating a transregional narrative that complicates national boundaries.
Jussawalla's reflection on Bessie Head's isolation at the Iowa International Writing Program (1976-'77) is a poignant meditation on marginality, rendered with an unflinching honesty.
The use of archival digital prints on Ilford Smooth Gloss paper and digital prints on Sunboard creates a tactile dialogue between the polished and the provisional, mirroring Jussawalla's own oscillation between precision and spontaneity.
The layout encourages a peripatetic engagement, with thematic sections arranged as interconnected nodes – a spatial logic that invites viewers to wander, pause, and reflect, much like Jussawalla's own poetic peregrinations.
A deeper engagement with Jussawalla's role in shaping Indian English poetry, particularly through his editorial work with The Clearing House and Debonair, could have illuminated his influence on literary networks.
On view at The Guild Art Gallery, Alibaug, through till July 15.