I think graffiti, chalk-pavement creations, banner paintings...are all art. They are part of our living, traditional art and a reflection of India’s ‘street culture’ – as much a RAP is to America.
- Pratiti Basu Sarkar, CIMA Gallery, Kolkata.

Giant wall murals...silhouette metal cut-outs...funky police booths.... Efforts to take contemporary art out of the close confines of galleries and into open spaces -- to aesthetically beautify the locality or make strong social statements – are on an upswing in major Indian metros. Maria Louis examines the new emerging ‘street culture’ where art has gone public

The young and the trendy designer threads at Mumbai’s Fashion Street now stop in their fast-track stride, while languid corporate suits are shaken out of their chauffeur-driven stupor and pedestrian office-goers do a double take. The culprit: the new-look traffic police chowky (booth) created by artist-architect couple, Brinda and Alfaz Miller, opposite the Bombay Gymkhana. This old building was uplifted, its woodwork and Mangalore-tiled roof restored and its walls decorated with an elaborate mural of an abstract road map strewn with familiar sights of the city like Flora Fountain, Kala Ghoda and Mahatma Phule Market. Across it, the pulse of the city throbs in mosaic tile images of its double-decker buses and taxis.

Is this a symptom of a trend of sorts, one wonders after stumbling upon other traffic police chowkies being magically transformed by the wand of joint commissioner of police, traffic, Satish Mathur, with a little help from concerned artists like Bose Krishnamachari, Papri Bose Mehta, Anjana Mehra, Arzan Khambatta and Sunil Padwal. The one at Girgaum sports a façade designed to defuse tension within those in search of their towed cars, its entrance simulating a lorry with typical stress busting kitschy images of roses and sunset, besides an amusing ‘SMILE...OK...PLEASE!’ “A huge red car made from tiles imprinted with vintage cars functions as signage, and you can actually look out of its windows,” exclaims Bose Mehta, who collaborated with Mehra to create the funky chowky.

Public art is a galloping new trend in Mumbai, where efforts to take art beyond private galleries were earlier confined to temporary pavement displays and interactive installations, prominently during the pioneering Kala Ghoda art festival and are now emulated by Goa in the Fontainhas area of Panjim. The more permanent versions were metal sculptures by Piloo Pochkanawala and Khambatta at traffic islands or giant wall murals like Reena and Jitish Kallat’s homage to the ghoda that gave the art district its name. But future urban landmarks could well include flyover pillars embellished with silhouette metal cut-outs of Mumbaiites hanging out of trains, just one of many ideas conceived by Khambatta’s fertile imagination.

A historic city like Delhi is peppered with statues of freedom fighters and national leaders, but contemporary art is slowly finding its feet in the great outdoors. The NGO, Sahmat, took art to the streets of the capital in a ‘Kala Karavan’ – a procession of 18 moveable artworks on cycle rickshaws and hand pushcarts. The purpose: to draw attention to issues like communalism and homelessness in the urban environment. During the Mumbai festival earlier this year, Kallat exploited a similar medium when he mounted on a signage truck his 10 by 20 feet saffron and green bleeding ink-blot printed on white vinyl and paraded it on the streets. “The idea was to create an unexpected collision between the chance viewer and the artwork,” he discloses. “The two complementary colours that occupy our National Flag, often read symbolically in religious terms, have come into confrontation on various occasions recently.”

Baroda may not have the political clout of Delhi or the financial muscle of Mumbai, but it could teach the bigger cities a thing or two about public art. “Sculptors from Baroda were commissioned to create works at the roundabouts…and each of them became a landmark of the respective artist’s work. It is really a way of honouring the city’s artists,” says an obviously appreciative Shireen Gandhy of Chemould.

S. G. Vasudev, founder member of the Cholamandal Artists Village in Chennai, has executed a number of public murals. “I have had a very good response,” says the Bangalore-based artist. “Some people even visit my art shows in galleries because they have seen my work on those buildings.” He believes artists could be commissioned to do specific projects on particular themes relevant to the spaces made available to them. “Installations and site-specific projects, which many artists execute in public spaces, are meant to generate certain expressions which are momentary,” he points out. “But others, like sculptures and murals, should find permanent homes there. Public art has the potential to make the general public more open and sensitive to the visual arts.”

It’s a foregone conclusion that art is more of an interactive experience, both for the artist and the viewer, when it is in a public space. “It becomes more exciting and experientially satisfying,” acknowledges artist, Jenny Bhatt. “With the urban Indian travelling more frequently, global cultural trends are being appreciated. Exposure makes people quality conscious and open to experimental ideas.”

Regular Verve contributor, Maria Louis, is a sensitive, informed art critic. She has her finger on the new trends and happenings in the world of art and culture.

For complete story, subscribe to Verve Magazine or buy the Verve issue on stands now!