Play with graffiti!

Artists are having fun with paint, creating graffiti with soul and a sense of fun, says Anuradha Varma

Harun Robert aka Rob on the kids' show MAD

The Berlin Wall, before it was torn down in 1989 became a large canvas for the artistic soul of West Berlin, as visitors created a colourful graffiti of art and messages. It stood for free expression and an open society and is still doing the rounds as memorabilia.

In India, too, graffiti is now becoming mainstream, trying to move away from offensive messages scratched on walls. Painters, graphic artists and even non-artists are using paints to make a difference to their city’s landscape. Graffiti such as ‘Elvis is dead, get over it!’, ‘Run Lola, run!’, etc, that grace random walls along with pop art images are meant to make people smile as they pass by.

Graffiti artist Jas Charanjiva, who has recently moved to Mumbai from the US, created a piece called Human Again, on the people who live under Taliban rule. She has also dealt with female foeticide and Afghan rape victims and is doing a wall at Cafe Goa in Bandra, creating wall art on the fly inspired by a live performance by opera singer Amar Muchhala. Jas recalls, “I was 12-years-old, growing up in California. Skaters were my friends and art on skateboards and skate stickers became my inspiration. This led to my interest in underground art and graffiti.”

She adds, “Graffiti is a powerful art form as it’s usually out on the street accessible to everyone, no matter your status in society, your age, etc. When there’s a message behind the art, graffiti is powerful.”

The Wall Project, that took shape more than a year ago, has totalled over 600 paintings on individual houses, playgrounds, hospitals, etc, and has a core team from Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, who hold day jobs and paint walls in their spare time. The motto is — Life is art and life is design. Advertising, foul language, drugs, religion and political messages are strictly not allowed.

Visual jockey Dhanya Pilo, a part of the project, would prefer the term ‘art in public spaces’ or ‘mural’ rather than graffiti as it usually “has a negative connotation”. She says, “Everything about the wall project is wacky and if you walk around Chapel Road or Tulsi Pipe Road will you sense the humour. We want to get more public art, music, installations, etc, to the public domain. The aim is to create a larger international collective of painters, artists and non-artists who enjoy painting and do public art. We want to initiate and sustain the wall project in other cities of India and involve as many people and teach them to enjoy colour and form.”

She adds, “We are constantly looking for new walls to paint all over Mumbai and want to paint at as many BMC schools, if they allow us. Now, neighbourhoods are beginning to approach us to paint in their areas, but we really respect the citizens who have understood the idea and are already implementing it in their areas, themselves.”

Graffiti artist Jas Charanjiva

Mainstream artists are also using the medium to extend their oeuvre. Manjunath Kamath recently converted 2,000 sq ft of New Delhi’s Gallery Espace into his sketchbook for a week. As a child, Manjunath remembers doing graffiti on the walls of the cowshed at his ancestral home in a Karnataka village. He says, “This time, my theme was on the conscious and subconscious. I drew spontaneously using the walls as my sketchbook. Usually, a sketchbook is like a private diary, but here, the whole process was transparent. A canvas has its own limitations. Unlike my regular work, this was spontaneous and it’s only now that I’m analysing what I created. It was a light, playful space and people came up and talked to me as I drew.”

Mumbai’s Guild Art Gallery too invited 20 artists, including Apnavi Thacker, Atul Dodiya, Baiju Parthan and Bose Krishnamachari to paint on the theme “I think therefore graffiti…”. The aim was to break the glass as well as hold a mirror to society and create a link between the diverse everyday noises of a city —  street vendors, auto-rickshaw drivers, car mechanics, fist fights, panwallahs, etc. Contemporary artist Justin Ponmany chose to recreate a Facebook wall for the project. He says, “Graffiti is an urban phenomenon and there are endless possibilities for art in public places. It’s youthful, opinionated and inspirational. On a Facebook wall, everybody is performing their own graffiti.”

Adds artist Prajakta Potnis, “Graffiti is now a mainstream art. I took the project as a challenge and decided to use my canvas as a piece of fabric. I thought of the themes written on walls and the scratchings on my stairway such as ‘I love you Pooja’. I traced these scribblings behind the canvas and then had it mounted.”

On art in public spaces, Prajakta remarks, “Graffiti in public spaces would mean that you don’t need to walk into a gallery to view art. Instead, art would be all around you.”

One can use art in the home too. Designer Krsna Mehta, for instance, has used wall art for homes, in place of wallpaper, using artists who painted hoardings for old Bollywood films. He says, “I used patterns with foliage and trees.”

Children, who are prone to scribbling on the walls at home, to their parents’ anguish, can also have their energies channelised through graffiti. Says Harun Robert, graffiti and graphic artist, who anchors the arts show MAD on Pogo, “I was first exposed to graffiti as a child when I visited my grandparents in the US. Along with my friends, we started using spray cans to paint friends’ garages, terraces and backyards in Delhi. Graffiti is live performance art. You just have to press the nozzle and the paint appears. On the show, we have created 40-feet portraits of Bollywood stars. For one, we made about 5,000 photocopies of Amitabh’s photograph and pasted it on a giant canvas. From afar, it resembles his portrait and from up close, you can see the snapshots.” A lot of parents, he says, are now fine with their children painting on their walls!

He has used graffiti for live animation too, painting individual frames on a wall, and then wiping them off for the next frame. He also painted walls in Mumbai for the Wall Project. He says, “When I painted on the wall at Tulsibai, kids would walk up, dip their hands in paint and put their prints on the wall. I would morph that into a bird or another character. The whole idea is beautification. In India, we don’t experiment with colour. We don’t see houses in yellows, reds and blues. As long as people are responsible, they should be given more freedom to paint in public spaces.

Whether it’s commenting on a social issue or reflecting a city’s soul, graffiti can be inspiring or simply cheer you up. Next time you’re bored out of your mind, pick up some spray paint and find a wall to be creative!

(This article was originally published in Times Life, Times of India's Sunday supplement)