Art will take over the walls of an
Andheri neighbourhood
A
community in Marol, together with a graffiti collective, are hosting a street
art festival, Ladies First (all the contributing artists are women), which will
cover over 10,000 square feet of walls in the area they call Marol Arts
Village.
Suresh
Nair, secretary of the Military Road Residents Welfare Association (MRRWA), a
neighbourhood body, says that after seeing eye-catching wall art in low-income
areas, he got in touch with the collective behind it. “We thought we could do
an art festival in Marol,” he says. MRRWA covers over 80 housing societies; was
it difficult to get the residents to agree, especially in such a large
locality? “It was absolutely unanimous. We were categorical that it would not
be any religious or political message. It would be purely art, and if at all
there was a message it would be civic and social.” He notes that officialdom
has been helpful. “Our ward officer and the police are extremely supportive of
the activity we do. Wicked Broz are taking care of the art and we are playing a
support role.”
Community
feeling
Wicked
Broz is the graffiti collective steering the show. Omkar Dharshwar, a member,
grew up in Marol, but it was only when he returned after four years in college
that he really began exploring it. “In the last three years I happened to meet
some people and found out about the scene happening here,” he says, “and it
looked very conducive. I started calling friends to come paint here. Over the
last three years, we painted with over 100 people. We painted in ‘underground’ places
like chawls.”
Zain
Siddiqui, co-founder, says the decision to have only women artists came from
realising that only about 10% of the street artists they had in their database
were female, and though they were all very good, their work wasn’t seen as much.
He is happy that aside from MMRWA giving the collective a free hand on the art,
the community is behind them. “People from chaprasis to old uncles
have come to help. We have had friends donate. Camlin has donated paints.”
Graffiti
is commonly regarded as underground, so it feels good, Siddiqi says, to be
doing things with permissions sorted out. Street art too has changed, he says,
“It has to adapt to what the community wants. The world has changed.”
Dhareshwar remembers that getting permissions took time. “In my own building,
it took me a year and half. Whatever work we did was without permission. Now we
have the chance of doing it a proper way, more inclusive, engaging the
community. It’s way cooler than what we used to do.”
No
longer underground
Anpu
Varkey is one of the artists leading the festival. The others are Sam Sam,
Avantika Mathur, Shirin Shaikh, Kesar Khinvasara, and Abigail Aroha Jensen;
more local artists will join in, bringing it to 30 contributors in all. Varkey
known among other works, for her collaboration with Hendrick Beikirch for
painting a 158-foot-tall mural of Gandhi on the Delhi Police HQ building,
questions the belief that street art is, by definition, underground. “I don’t
have to go out at night to paint just to show what I can do,” she says.
“[Street art] is not something that pays the bills, but it has gotten me around
the country, from Dharamshala to Kochi, from Jaipur to Shillong, to travel and
work in public spaces.” Street art in India is regarded differently from, say,
western cities, where it can be seen as a nuisance that public money must be
spent cleaning up, she says. “Here, people don’t look down on the work.”
Ladies
First will also feature hip-hop cyphers, workshops, films and talks on street
art, and an exhibition of works on canvas.
Ladies
First, from March 25–31, Marol Arts Village, AndheriEast.
Source: THE HINDU-27th March,2019
