As a young art student, Badal Nanjundaswamy had put up a big hoarding near his home in Mysore. He used to frequently draw something on it, reacting to current issues. All his life as an artist, he had worked that way, letting his art do the talking whenever he wanted to convey something to society.
This naturally led him to street art. A couple of years back, people who came out on the Sulthanpalya Main Road in north Bangalore in the morning had the shock of their lives when they saw a life-size crocodile bang in the middle of a large pothole. That was Nanjundaswamy’s protest against the bad condition of the roads in the city, which earned him the name ‘crocodile artist’.
On another occasion, he painted a picture of ‘Yamaraj’ with his mouth centred on an open manhole. Both the art works evoked swift response from the civic authorities, who repaired the pothole and the manhole. The artist was in the city this weekend as part of the Dhwani art and cultural festival organised by the College of Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram.
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A wide wall became his canvas here. Titled ‘rice thieves’, the art work was his reaction to the murder of tribal youth, Madhu, by a mob in Attapady recently. The image also becomes a critique of the developmental model, which has resulted in shrinking paddy fields.
“Stealing food is not a crime. It is a desperate act of survival. It is unimaginable cruelty to kill someone for stealing food,” says Mr. Nanjundaswamy.
Without a steady income at home, he had taken to painting banners and signboards soon after school to support his mother.
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“After school, there was no one to guide me. My family was very poor. I decided that I should take up serious education in art and joined the Chamarajendra Academy of Visual Arts (CAWA) in Mysore,” he says.
Later, he got a job at a major advertising firm. But he quit after a few years to do his own thing as freelancer. He picked up from the internet the basic lessons in three-dimensional street art, which made him famous. That gave instant popularity, and brought instant response from the authorities. What took months of protests and memorandums was solved by his 3D drawings.
Nanjundaswamy also works as an art director in Kannada films.
A book of his short stories in Kannada will be released soon.