Mid-Day Anniversary Special: Varun Gupta on bringing Marol Maroshi slums to life with AI artwork

A frail toddler in an oversized sports jersey is eyeing us like a private investigator inside the Marol Maroshi slums. To be fair, we would be surprised if these lanes had drawn in any camera wielding men like us in the past. Turns out, they have. Photographer and AI artist Varun Gupta, whose works caused the 1922-established Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya to embrace Artificial Intelligence (AI), beelined to these same lanes as a fresher to the city in 2017. He was merely hunting for inspiration, he said.

Gupta explained, “My sister worked for a bank in MIDC which brought with it modest living quarters in the neighbourhood. When I reached Mumbai from Allahabad, I camped there for a while. As a graphic designer, I was working on animated commercials for a finance company,” Gupta recalled. Life in a matchbox apartment in Mumbai can get monotonous, he remarked as he added, “I’d step out for a breath of fresh air from time to time. That’s how I first wandered into the Marol Maroshi slums.”

The stories Gupta found in these lanes that we’re walking with him on a clear monsoon day, would eventually shape his AI artworks. “I heard stories in these slums that would have been impossible to find in touristy spots in the city. As a visual storyteller, I felt at home in these lanes,” he recalled. A recurring theme in Gupta’s artwork is the human condition in underserved areas in the city. “I often wondered how life would be if Mumbai’s poorest had access to the city’s riches,” the artist said.

Among his popular works that imagined concepts like an extravagant Christmas celebration, and a utopian musical world inside Mumbai’s slums, came Gupta’s pièce de résistance, Cyborgbay. “The series was my twist on old Bombay inhabited by cyborgs [a term for futuristic bionic humans used in sci-fi pop-culture]. I had no idea so many people would like it,” he laughed. Among his fans was Nandini Sampat, who curated the new People of Mumbai exhibit at CSMVS’s Mumbai Gallery.

“I just happened to be at the right place at the right time, man,” Gupta made a candid admission. While the new gallery had exhibits aplenty from the city’s past and present, the gallery space reserved for a window to its future remained empty; until Gupta stepped in. “I was a bit flustered when I got the call from the Museum nearly two years after I released the series,” he admitted. The imaginative artworks will be on display at the Museum till September.

Over a quick meal at a restaurant not far away from the slums, we discuss our shared love and hate relationship with the city, its skyrocketing rentals, and of course, the ethical future of AI. “As far as the question of ownership goes, you’d have to see how much effort goes into each work before you form judgements. Countries worldwide are in an AI race. It would be counterproductive to curb AI in any form through laws in the country right now,” he suggested before signing off. We’re still digesting that bit.

2017
The first time Mumbai’s slums sparked his AI art journey