Raj Rewal’s works on paper arrive at Akara Modern in Mumbai

At Akara’s upcoming exhibition Raj Rewal: Drawn Worlds, opening on 15th May in Colaba, that distinction becomes less straightforward than it first appears. The exhibition gathers a selection of Rewal’s drawings and paintings from recent years, many of them crowded with bureaucrats, performers, rulers and anonymous urban characters. Though detached from the demands of construction, the works remain deeply architectural in the way they organise movement, tension and narrative within space.

For decades, Rewal’s public identity has been shaped by buildings. His name carries the weight of institutional architecture in post-Independence India, tied to conversations around climate-responsive design and civic modernism. The drawings at Akara reveal another register of thinking altogether. Here, structure loosens. Humour enters. History folds into contemporary spectacle.