Artsy City
In a neighbourhood that I previously lived in, the streets I passed every day as a child suddenly seemed new, refreshed and colourful. On observation, it turns out that they received an exalting makeover under a beautification pet project by an artist Mannu Luthra. The trees trunks were all painted upon. The artist started her drive to paint tree trunks as a pandemic past-time which now spans out to a stretch of three kilometres.
Recently, the local governing body collaborated with the artist’s NGO — the Luthra Art Foundation. Together, they have undertaken a ‘beautification’ drive for the city of Surat. And suddenly, the mundane looking streets have colours on them.
This road stretch falls in the city’s well-developed area, which is well equipped with wide developed roads, appropriate traffic islands, pedestrian footpaths, other urban infrastructure, and proper facilities. The residences and institutions in the area have been here for more than 40 years. Yet, why is it that art entered the urban sphere so late and that too as a beautification device no less? In other words, why is art an afterthought to urbanism?
Another question that arises in my mind is- what is the value of street art in urban India? While street art is considered a distant and more ‘legitimate’ cousin of graffiti in some parts of the world, it is not the case in India since our definition of graffiti is very different from that of the West.
Tracing to the foundation of that dilemma, it is not rare to come across names of lovers and phone numbers and filmy dialogues on historical monuments and walls of public buildings in India, especially popular tourist spots. These places are open and vulnerable to the habit of notoriously being vandalised by the local Indian people(without a social cause, obviously).
Additionally, we are already accustomed to the defacement of public walls, seeing them splatted with paan stains and peeling adverts of political campaigns on walls that sometimes also serve as public urinals. This careless use of public space carries a quasi-legal status because of the sheer impracticality of enforcing vandalism laws in such a socio-political context.
However, in Western countries, graffiti is an expression of anti-establishment. This is primarily because public walls are considered pristine and cannot be used for posters and signage. Hence, graffiti is viewed as an anti-thesis of art. While art explores aesthetics and purpose, graffiti uniquely holds a mirror to the classical and/or dominant ideas of aesthetics and decorum.
Therefore, the artistic expressions of social issues that the West associates with graffiti have little in common with all the Rajs’ immortalising their love for their Simrans’ on the walls of our public structures. Thus, what has gained popularity in India as ‘street art’ should not be misconstrued as graffiti, even though some artists engage with social issues in their work.
Having established the difference between the two, there is a rise in the street art culture in the urban cities of India. It is organisations like the St+art India Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation that works on art projects in public spaces. The foundation has been celebrated for democratising art by making it accessible to a wider audience by taking it out of the conventional gallery space and embedding it within the cities we live in.
Their work has led to India’s first art district in Delhi’s Lodhi Colony, a government-owned housing society to house their employees built in the 1940s. This colony was revamped when prominent artists from around the world painted 30 artworks on the walls in this neighbourhood. This has led to a revitalisation of public place in the area where street art not only acts as popular landmarks, but it actively engages with the everyday lives of the people living and visiting the district, with the residents taking great pride in their otherwise dated neighbourhood. Similar was the case of Mumbai’s Sassoon Dock art project. This temporary art exhibit helped revive a forgotten area in the city and help the local fishermen community gain identity and livelihood.
This form of pop-up urbanism is becoming extensively popular where such spontaneous interventions redefine public spaces on different scales- socially, politically and economically. Thus, street art interventions intended to reinvigorate the neighbourhoods by an organised artistic intervention are a way of saving the decaying and faceless parts of our growing cities.
Amidst the concrete jungle and personality-less identically planned urban cities, street art could add individuality to our urban environments and transform them from ‘context-less spaces’ to ‘well-claimed places’. While this holds true for the existing urban realm, new urban designers and planners should actively include Street art as an integral part of urban place-making and not wait for it to be incorporated as an afterthought for urban beautification.
With Indian cities growing at a neck-breaking pace, art-based place-making could be an integrative approach to urban planning and community building that stimulates local economies and leads to increased innovation, cultural diversity, and civic engagement. Since creativity fuels place value, the benefits of using arts and culture to tap into a place’s unique character could extend well beyond the art world.
