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Jitish Kallat "…is among the most attentive chroniclers of the postcolonial city seized by the crisis of globalization: he studies its pathologies of violence; he dwells on the fortuitous groups, the crowds of rioters or the assembly of people waiting for a train, that have replaced the cohesive community; he examines the life of labour, commemorates the cycle-rickshaw puller and the load-bearing porter. And he records these phenomena, not as... Jitish Kallat "…is among the most attentive chroniclers of the postcolonial city seized by the crisis of globalization: he studies its pathologies of violence; he dwells on the fortuitous groups, the crowds of rioters or the assembly of people waiting for a train, that have replaced the cohesive community; he examines the life of labour, commemorates the cycle-rickshaw puller and the load-bearing porter. And he records these phenomena, not as impersonal social-scientific memoranda, but through the tender, terrifying immediacy of the painted surface" (Ranjit Hoskote, Alchemy, Art Musings exhibition catalogue, 2005, not paginated). One of the images that Kallat has most frequently returned to as a vehicle of this commentary is the portrait of the city-dweller, both alone and in a crowd.

In his series of large canvases titled Dawn Chorus, Kallat works with photographic images he has taken of young children who sell books on the streets and at the traffic signals of his city, Mumbai. Turning them into witty paintings layered with several strata of meaning, the artist speaks of both the city's urban chaos and its toughened citizens who must negotiate that chaos on an everyday basis just to get by.

Similar to his earlier Carbon Milk series, "The root of these pictures, were some photographs I took of young children who sell international bestseller books on the traffic lights of Mumbai. The children sell these books with self-assured rigour. Often illiterate, they would offer a long sermon about the merits of the book. To me these young children almost become like mascots for the resilience of [a] tough city such as Mumbai. Above the forehead are rendered a thousand colliding stories; a complex narrative of 18 million people living on a tiny island of 468 square kilometers" (the artist quoted in "Reality Filter: Huang Du's Interview with Jitish Kallat", 365 Lives, Arario Gallery exhibition catalogue, 2007, p. 26).

Here, "Rather than focusing on [his subjects'] reduced circumstances, Kallat celebrates their resilience and their enterprising spirit. Each child's hair is a collision of traffic and pedestrians, forming a city that sits atop their heads. In this respect the paintings are double portraits, depictions of street urchins but also portraits of the claustrophobic and chaotic city, its countless narratives tumbling Medusa-like from each child's head". In another nod to his city, Kallat "...mounts these paintings on bronze sculptures that are re-created from the wall adornments found on the 120-year- old Victoria Terminus train station in the centre of Mumbai" ("Jitish Kallat", Haunch of Venison website, accessed May 2012).

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