White cube is not passé but there are those who want to go beyond, whose canvas don’t fit into the confines of a gallery. In Bengaluru, this clique of young and restless are claiming the streets and walls and literally painting the town red. Look around and you will find it everywhere. On the walls of a popular music café, dilapidated buildings, under flyovers, colleges, and even on the walls of a police station. The city is lapping up street art like never before. “I think one of the reasons is the presence of several art schools. There is Ken School of Art, Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath (CKP), Srishti Institute of Art, Design & Technology and students want to express themselves. The urban landscape is disheartening and there is a lot of disconnect. Bangalore was a sleepy town and then suddenly it grew. It then becomes a platform for expressions like these,” says Archana Prasad of Jaaga, in collaboration with other cultural organisations — initiated “Urban Avantgarde”, which had artists from India and Germany painting public spaces in 2012. Artists’ takes on urban life, auto rides, culture and politics now adorn various spots in the city.
Shunnal Ligade or The Bathroom Painter, Nilanjan Dhar a.k.a Bocu, Ullas Hydoor, Poornima Sukumar and many more belong to this growing tribe of street artists in the city. Some indulge in graffiti or some just make murals on public walls. What drives them? Ullas, an architect by profession, says it is purely for personal reasons. “I don’t want to make it sound a big deal by saying that I want to give a message through my work. I don’t like boring plain walls.” His subject matter is not always that simplistic. The wall on Hard Rock Café on St. Marks Road has a woman’s eyes and a chain which breaks over her third eye, which in this case is a bindi. He painted it with Sage Arjun, another street artist. Ullas highlighted the police initiative of encouraging women to report instances of sexual abuse or harassment at Ashok Nagar police station, a commissioned work like Hard Rock Café. Ullas is handling a similar issue at Jyoti Nivas College as well. “It’s actually a transgender and not a woman. You know it is not the woman but the idea of woman which is subjected to exploitation.” To Shunnal, an ex-student of CKP, it gives an opportunity to paint in a space which has no boundaries. Though most active in the Indira Nagar side of the town, Shunnal moves around and paints all over the city. The outer wall of the newly-opened restaurant ‘The Hide-out’ in BTM Layout is Shunnal’s latest work, which is a commissioned work.
Shunnal has two different styles — he either writes Peace (which is called throw-ups in graffiti jargon) or two eyes. At times, he also tags (writing your name is called tagging in graffiti) ‘The Bathroom Painter’, a title given to him by his friends when he started painting the washrooms of his office complex. As much commissioned work Shunnal has done, there are works he had done without due permissions. He ventures out in the night donning his graffiti jacket which can accommodate six to seven spray cans. “There were once these police barricades on the Old Madras Road towards Double Road. The cops would stop the vehicles and ask for money so at some distance before the barricade, I made these two eyes and wrote ‘Peace’ so that commuters could take another route. I really felt like doing it.” Shutters, telephone exchange boxes have also been his canvases.
The West Bengal Prevention of Defacement of Property Act, 1976 makes graffiti or writing, drawing, painting on public walls an offence in India. It attracts the punishment of arrest and jail for six months/fine of Rs.1000 or both. The objection by the law must pose several challenges to a street artist. “It does but Bangalore cops are not very stringent. When I had just started out, we were a group of young artists painting a wall, a cop came and took our numbers and said he would like to speak to our fathers but never called,” recalls Ullas.
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Brushing up
Shunnal Ligade, who is also known as the Bathroom Painter. Shunnal is contemplating some striking work in and around the city soon.
Ullas Hydoor is an architect by profession, and wants to enliven the scene with graffiti jams and a formal street artists’ congregation.
Poornima Sukumar mostly indulges in community driven projects while Bocu is largely active in Yelahanka.
Shilo Shiv Suleman and a lot of Srishti students are also fuelling the scene.
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Sites to catch some striking visual art
The side-wall of Hard Rock Café on St. Marks Road bears a woman with the bindi as her third eye. It has been done jointly by Sage Arjun and Ullas Hydoor.
You can’t miss some excellent graffiti and murals in Church Street by the likes of Poornima Sukumar, Ullas Hydoor and others.
There are a whole lot of them underneath the KH Double Road Flyover done by artists as part of a community project Yellow UFO undertaken by Jaaga.
The compound wall of RBANM’S College, Ulsoor by Bocu for which he got permission from the college. Try to locate another work by Bocu at a dilapidated building in Shivaji Nagar, which he says hasn’t got much attention but remains one of his best.
The walls of JNC in Koramangala and Goethe Institute on CMH Road, Indira Nagar also bear some superb art work.
How Poornima Sukumar avoids this risk is by doing community projects which are in collaboration with NGOs and even government bodies. “Graffiti in its original sense is really about being anti-establishment. I don't have that stance and frustrations. I want it to be inclusive. So, when I did that equality work on women empowerment at Church Street, I invited people to come and join me. Since I do these kind of works, I don't need to venture out in the night. And even when we were doing the wall, nobody objected. There was garbage all around, we cleared it and then painted the wall,” says Poornima.
Though a lot of artists do independent work, there seems to be an increase in the engagement with the society. The massive public art work which is underway at Peenya Metro Station by Srishti students (to be inaugurated in December) or Ullas’ collaboration with Ashok Nagar Police Station are cases in point. In Banashankari, the residents took charge to free a site from garbage, cleared it and invited Poornima and other artists to paint the wall.
Artist Amitabh Kumar who is the visiting faculty to Srishti, has been inspiring his students to take their art to the streets sums it up aptly, “With its rapidly changing landscape, Bangalore has so much potential. And the weather is just perfect.”
