Drawing Room: Richa Arya sees the price of urbanism in Deepak Kumar’s art

What can bird skeletons, blueprints, glass and geometry tools tell us about how our cities are changing? Deepak Kumar shows us how to read between the skylines

I saw Deepak Kumar’s Warning Line at the Indian Ceramics Triennale in 2023, where it immediately drew my attention, both for its scale and its theme. The gigantic work depicts the fragile skeleton of a green pigeon. In it, ceramic pieces of various sizes are assembled together and used as the backdrop for drawings and paintings showing avian bone structures, tree roots, geometry tools, and the kind of blueprints commonly seen in urban planning.

In Crossing (2021-2022) Deepak Kumar uses natural elements mixed with urban themes to showcase ecological issues. (IMAGE COURTESY: RICHA ARYA AND DEEPAK KUMAR)

Warning Line (2023) uses the skeleton of a green pigeon to depict species endangered by urbanisation. (IMAGE COURTESY: RICHA ARYA AND DEEPAK KUMAR)