Street art breathes a new life into Mumbai

The children at Bandra's Pali Chimbai Municipal School look at Daan Botlek in wide-eyed wonder. “What's he painting on our wall?” asks a pigtailed middle-schooler. “We want to draw with him!” chimes a fellow classmate as the hallway erupts in approval. But Daan, perched atop a crane on the school grounds, is oblivious to the buzz around him. He eventually alights minutes later to take a breather.

His white T-shirt is soiled with acrylic paint and the red dust of the school, his brown horn-rimmed glasses, a tad foggy from Mumbai's humidity. For someone who's created works of art from Berlin to Bangkok, it comes with the territory. Daan is one of The Netherlands' most famous street artists. But this is a label he'd rather do without. “To me, this is a wall painting,” he says, pointing to his 40-ft mural for the recently-concluded StArt Mumbai, a festival that brought together street artists from across the globe.
Chimbai is a stopover in a suburb that's a petri dish for the fledgling, but flourishing street art movement in Mumbai. From the bylanes of Ranwar and Chapel Road to the underpass at Reclamation, Bandra's walls have offered themselves as canvases to anyone with artistic flair or thoughts to share. And locals like Genesia Alves are all the accepting of it. “Art has a way of reaching out,” she says. “And we yearn for when things were friendlier and kinder. Old Bandra residents are inclusive, welcoming and artistic. We love things that foster a sense of community.”

Indeed, from the subways of New York City and crumbling facades in war-torn Libya to the felled Berlin Wall, street art has transcended the realm of social and political commentary to become a tie that binds. Go to any neighbourhood that nurtures public art, and chances are you’ll be witness to a distinctive sense of identity – the kind Alves refers to.
This strong sense of community makes Khotachiwadi another nursery for Mumbai's street art, albeit on a smaller scale. The city's only heritage village spans just one lane, but it's no less accepting of public art. A fitting example is the Madonna mural on the wall adjacent to the Khotachiwadi chapel. A fair bit of enquiring eventually leads to Paul Bhonsle, the artist behind the eight-year-old mural.

“The character of Khotachiwadi allows you to do this. There’s a huge acceptance of the fact that someone acknowledges their place,” says Bhonsle, referring to a resident who installed a chappar atop the wall to minimise damage to the mural. This is more than a sense of ownership – this is a shielding of what the painting represents. It's a Hindu take on a Christian figurehead, pointing to the amalgamation of two distinct cultures. “The Madonna is on a lotus, flanked by two elephants holding up garlands,” explains Bhonsle. “It’s a marker of the journey Madonna took to come to the neighbourhood of Pathare Prabhus, an example of two faiths co-existing in harmony.”

If Bhonsle’s work is a ready reckoner of communal harmony, Ranjit Dahiya’s Bollywood Art Project (BAP) is a nod to a forgotten art. His famous Anarkali mural on Chapel Road and tributes to Amitabh Bachchan and Rajesh Khanna on a Bandstand bungalow are him doffing the hat to vintage Bollywood posters. “Now, one can digitise 1,000 posters a day and put them up,” he says. “Back then it was painstaking to hand paint them. It’s a dead art now.”

Dahiya, who started his career as a whitewasher, has never had to deal with law enforcement officials who view street art as a nuisance. If anything, they’ve been curious – even welcoming – of it. “When I was working on my Anarkali painting, two cops came around asking what I was doing. But once they got to know I’d sought the property owner’s permission, they were very welcoming,” he laughs.
Dahiya is the antithesis of Tyler and Daku, two of India’s vaunted public artists. Like most graffiti writers and street artists around the world, Mumbai-based Tyler and Delhi-based Daku keep their identities secret to avoid getting into trouble with the law. “I was caught twice by cops and had to explain my work to them for 10 minutes. But they were more interested in my money,” says Tyler via email.

Referred to by many as Mumbai’s Banksy (the British artist), Tyler’s Andheri-based works are satirical takes on a spectrum ranging from consumerism to enforced morality. His Visual Pollution series, an answer to those who view his work as a form of vandalism, questioned our collective tolerance of eyesores like overflowing garbage on the streets and illegal hoardings by politicians. “If you think about it, 'Swachh Bharat Abhiyan' is what Visual Disobedience is all about. Unfortunately, I didn’t receive any commission on it,” he says wryly.

Tyler strongly believes street art is a viable way of beautifying our cities, and so does Daku. Although most of his works are in Delhi, it’s Daku’s F**k project (which gives the F-word a Devanagari makeover) that’s perhaps his most well-known of a lot that includes politically-charged art. Like Tyler, Daku has his own take on what constitutes defacement. Such as his spoof on the Louis Vuitton monogram on dustbins across Delhi, interspersed with the Devanagari letters for ‘Daku’. When read continuously, the letters spell out kuda – Hindi for garbage.

“Street art turns inanimate surfaces like walls into communicative mediums,” he says in a telephonic interview. “Our walls are calling.”
Daku isn’t far off the mark. What was, and still is, largely relegated to Mumbai and Delhi is gradually finding its way to Bangalore, Baroda and Pune. Rajvardhan Kadam, head curator of Mumbai-based art collective Visual Disobedience, deems street art a humane act — something that brings intimacy to a city bereft of it. “Street artists are taking ‘fine art’ to the streets and making it more accessible,” he says.

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Why, then, do many have a negative view of street art? Is it because it’s often mistaken for graffiti, in which writers ‘tag’ their names on public property to claim it as part of their territory? Perhaps. But what Kadam says next hits bullseye. “There will be some controversial activities, art with political implications or sexually explicit content. But so what? Look at our history — specifically our art history. It’s not defacement. It’s expression,” he stresses.
Contrary to common perception, public art isn’t easy to execute. Choosing a wall requires lots of homework, says Dahiya. Dutch artist Daan concurs, saying that he goes location-scouting like a photographer. “You also need to know how to hold a spray can and how to release the pressure and switch distances between the can and the surface,” reveals Kadam.

The focus on bringing art to the masses is perhaps why the street art community is a close-knit one — just like the very communities that foster public art. There’s no competition here, believes Tyler. “If it’s competition, it’s not art,” he says emphatically.
Our walls are waiting to be used as canvases instead of being spat or urinated upon, or plastered with ugly flyers. Hanif Qureshi, creative director of StArt, couldn’t agree more. He’s done everything from working with long-neglected sign painters to commissioning a mural on the wall of Tihar Jail. His Proverb Project, which immortalises words of wisdom on our walls, has kicked off in Chennai, and Qureshi is eager to go nationwide with it.
From the way things are going, it won’t be too much of a task to make street art a nationwide movement. The sentiment is best expressed by Bandra resident Genesia Alves. “I see people, exhausted from living here, do a double take and grin when they see these installations," she says. "Mumbai needs this.”

Graffiti vs. street art

Graffiti, which is focused on typography, is territorial and all about leaving your mark, says Anika Gupta, Professor of Art at Parsons, Indian School of Design and Innovation (ISDI) and social media manager of Art Lounge, an art collective in Churchgate, Mumbai. “Although commonly associated with the hip-hop, B-boy and the post-punk movements of the '80s-'90s, graffiti has its roots in the subway systems of New York. This was a time many who lost their jobs or homes used graffiti to voice their frustration against the establishment” she says.

Daan Botlek agrees. “Graffiti is more focused on itself and since it's all about territory, you're communicating with other graffiti writers. Street art is more focused on people walking by and the spreading of ideas,” he adds.

Rajvardhan Kadam of Visual Disobedience feels the only difference between graffiti and street art is that of intent. “While both are captivating and subversive, I believe that street art demands more time for comprehension,” he says.