In Balasinor, a sleepy town famed for its dinosaur fossils, a new exhibition titled Balasinaurus reveals another kind of preservation — one that captures the vibrant afterlife of Art Deco in India’s hinterland through architecture and typography.
Once a minor princely state under the presidencies and provinces of British India, Balasinor gained fame as the “Jurassic Park of India” in 1981 when palaeontologists discovered dinosaur bones and fossils during a routine geological survey of this mineral-rich area. In the following years, they found one of the largest clutches of dinosaur hatcheries and fossils of at least 13 species, with the most significant discovery being that of a carnivorous abelisaurid theropod named Rajasaurus narmadensis. Today, Balasinor is a sleepy town known for its fossil tourism. But photographer Aashim Tyagi’s ongoing exhibition, 'Balasinaurus', reveals another kind of preservation — one that captures the vibrant afterlife of Art Deco in India’s hinterland through architecture and typography.
The exhibition, part of Tyagi’s ongoing Street°Type°Archive project, reveals how typography and architecture together tell the story of India’s modernity and its indigenisation. Balasinor’s homes, with their saturated colours, carved nameplates, and Gujarati lettering styled in Art Deco flourishes, embody a uniquely local iteration of a modernist aesthetic. The symmetry, geometry, and ornamentation of the façades speak of aspiration, self-expression, and the optimism of a newly independent India asserting its identity in concrete and stucco.
Tyagi’s photographs capture details of balconies shaped like wings, doors framed with rhythmic curves, and pastel hues that refuse to fade under the western sun. Each image highlights how residents adapted this foreign style to suit their cultural and climatic realities, thereby embedding the global modernist impulse within the textures of local life. The result is what the photographer calls "Indo-Deco”: a dialogue between imported design codes and the language of Gujarati domesticity.
By foregrounding typography — the hand-painted signs, house names, and storefront lettering that dot Balasinor’s lanes — Balasinaurus situates architecture as a form of everyday storytelling. The script itself becomes an archive, one that records histories of migration, aspiration, and belonging.
Balasinaurus, Photographs by Aashim Tyagi, is on view from November 9 to 30, 2025, at the Dilip Piramal Art Gallery, NCPA, Mumbai. Learn more here.
Follow Aashim Tyagi here.
If you enjoyed reading this, here’s more from Homegrown:
Pooja Saxena’s India Street Lettering Zines Are An Ode To India’s Lettering Heritage
We Spoke To Four Homegrown Type Designers About The Modern Revival Of Indic Scripts
Join Type Artist Tanya George For A Day Of Street Typography Across Colaba