Anantapur turns into a canvas

Anantapur has turned into a canvas for 14 Spanish artists who are painting across the city and in the nearby areas

Anantapur and its surrounding areas, in Andhra Pradesh, are filled with a flurry of activity. 14 Spanish artists are painting the town red, literally. A mural by the river, a photo installation at the Rural Development Trust (RDT) Hospital in Bathalapalli, a painting in the meeting hall of Hs For Hearing Impaired – RDT School in Bukkarayasamudram, a site-specific installation of bamboo in RDT School...

 

Rightly called the Anantapur Art Walk, the project is led by the Rural Development Trust (RDT), a non-governmental organisation working for the betterment of vulnerable and disadvantaged communities in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. The main objective is to bring international art to people who do not have access to it. At the same time, we want them to be inspired by the surroundings: the people, the colours, the buildings of Anantapur. We also wanted the art route to be a gateway to RDT’s development projects and a way to raise awareness on health, hygiene, education, rights of people with disabilities,” says Judit Algueró Llop, International Communications Coordinator, RDT — Vicente Ferrer Foundation.

Antonio Torres, curator of Anantapur Art Walk, has consciously chosen artists who have worked on similar projects

. Two artists are using blue, the hallmark colour of Ibiza, for their work. Elephants, monkeys, women in saris, tennis players, Indian maps... Anantapur will be buzzing with colourful and meaningful images,” he says.

 

Joan Aguiló was working on his mural by the river, which was full of dirt and gravel, when he was joined by children from the community. “They wanted to paint with me, so I let them,” says Aguilo. The language barrier notwithstanding, the artist felt his art enabled a dialogue between him and the community. A blue peacock in the background with a woman and a man engaged in an act of cleaning embraces a wall by the river, an indication of how impressed the artist is with the Swachh Bharat movement.

 

London-based Marian Moratinos is working on a photography-based mural in the tennis camp within the RDT campus. “It’s a kind of a digital sketch exploring the relationship between architecture and the environment. Since I want people to identify with the piece, I have painted well-known symbols of the city, like the TV tower, or popular fruits like the papaya,” explains Moratinos..

Llop says the highlight is engaging with the community. “The Spanish artists will be working with local artists. The children have an important role to play during the creation of each art piece. For instance, Paca Florit chose trencadís (broken ceramic technique) because of its textures, so that visually-impaired children can also feel the art.”