Inward Outbound

In modern cities giving way to rampant urbanisation and quiet erasure, Anila Kumar’s practice calls for attention, not just to what is seen, but to what is slowly vanishing and slipping out of frame. His work dwells in the everyday–drawing from his routine travels, walks around the neighbourhood and other experiences that become introspective portals. They trace the transformation of spaces and communities impacted by unchecked development, shifting livelihoods, and changing social rhythms.

Rather than monumentalising the city, he observes it at its most ordinary, through sites of leisure, labour, transit and memory and makes note of how these environments are altered, reoccupied, or abandoned over time.

Anila Kumar’s prints serve as visual records of both the landscapes he encounters and their internal states. What is depicted is not only a portrait of contemporary urban life but a reflection on the emotional and political undercurrents that shape it. Labour, transience, community, and the weight of memory recur as themes in his work, but never as grand gestures. His is a practice of sustained looking, one that resists spectacle and instead finds significance in the accumulation of moments we often overlook.

Working primarily with woodcut printing, he uses a technique that demands slowness, repetition, and precision. Each print undergoes several layers of carving and inking, allowing for depth, texture and density to build over time. This process mirrors the core of his practice–anchored in sustained observation and marking. 

Thematically, Anila Kumar’s work resists nostalgia as a mode of escape. Instead, it interrogates the feelings of loss and dislocation that is part and parcel of how our cities transform. The imagery, while drawn from memory, is far from just sentimental. They are detailed and instructive. Through these visual narratives, he offers us a diaristic archive of his inner worlds. Anila Kumar’s images are meditations on place and time, and through them, he invites us to consider the forces that make up our lives in contemporary cities.

Mehreen Yousaf