For the sixth edition of their Street Art fest, St+art has landed in Hyderabad and is all set to transform parts of the cityscape into a piece of art.
The group that’s begun work on a cluster of buildings at B S Maktha that overlooks the Hussain Sagar is excited to unravel their art on the buildings, thereby rendering a soothing view to an otherwise dull drive on the Necklace road.
These walls were earlier treated, cured and made ready with putty to enable the artists and a few volunteers to proceed with the art work. Along with art@telangana and Kalakriti, the group will take a couple of days to complete their work. St+art India Foundation is a non-profit organisation that works on art projects in public spaces with an aim to make art accessible to a wider audience. “As a team we will be working in Hyderabad for the first time and we are looking forward to it. In Hyderabad, the canvas will be a varied one because the collaboration of local artists will lead to a lot of cross pollination of thoughts and reflections. The idea of street art began when we, a group of five, decided on taking art to people, thus making art more accessible to everyone. This does add to the idea of beautification, but it also becomes an appropriate medium of a bigger dialogue within society,” explains Akshat Nauriyal, Content Director with St+art India foundation.
St+art India foundation is the brain child of a group of five that constitutes of Arjun Bahl as festival director, Akshat Nauriyal, content director, Giulia Ambrogi, curator Hanif Kureshi, artistic director and Thanish Thomas, projects director.
All their experience and interests converge in the common aim of making streets more interactive through the medium of urban art festivals. “For instance, we undertook the project at Okhla dry port, where we painted 100-odd shipping containers, the idea was to bring in more crowd to tell the story of Asia’s biggest dry port. In Bangalore, the projects included beautifying places and let them be reclaimed by the people of Bangalore,” they explain.
Festival director and St+art India Foundation founder Arjun Bahl has over 12 years of experience in the Entertainment and events Industry, having booked more than 500 artists over the last 10 years. This founding member of the St+art India Foundation - an non-profit organisation that works on art projects in public spaces is totally non-for profit organisation.
Akshat, an independent filmmaker/musician who works across a range of audio-visual mediums. In 2011 He founded Nowdelhi.tv , which is India’s first web-based video documentary series that focuses exclusively on emerging sub-cultures. The project documents the alternative and underground ‘scenes‘ that exist within our cities. The team explains that it is their conscious decision to stay away from religious and political agendas and instead be a medium of powerful and relevant local narratives. “Lodhi colony project was another interesting one. The place was in a pathetic state even though it has history behind it. Our work involved in amplying the beauty of the place in its current state and open it to people to think of ways to conserve it and feel proud of our culture,” explains Akshat.
“In Hyderabad we are also collaborating with local artists, so the canvas will be an interesting one,” they say.What makes the works of St+art different are their intelligent ideas and thought processes and it comes from the teams vibrant idea that come from members like Hanif Kureshi an independent designer and artist working with type and typography on different media and scales. Kureshi’s attempt is to bring back attention to vernacular street typography of India and such arts, and their validity in representing diverse technologies of graphic design in India. His work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Centre Pompidou Paris, Triennle Design Museum, Milan among others.
Member Giulia Ambrogi is a public and urban art curator. After three years working for MAXXI Museum, the most important contemporary art museum in Italy, she committed herself in spreading the culture of Public and Urban Art especially in Italy and in India. Over these years she has been working with numerous of the world's best street artists such as Borondo, Escif, Agostino Lacurci, MOMO, M-City, Sam 3, Liqen and Daku. As an expert in Street Art and Public Art she teaches in the course Management of Cultural Heritage at Sole24ore, Arcadia University, Public High Schools and Institutes of Culture to discuss the state of art in cities around the world and about the interaction between art and territory.
