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Brush for a cause

Public art
Last Updated 14 July 2015, 18:28 IST

When young artist Baadal Nanjundaswamy placed a life-sized fibre crocodile on a pothole in RT Nagar not long ago, he brought everyone’s attention to the poor condition of the roads in the City. His work even reached out to the authorities, who ended up fixing it shortly. “I had done something similar in Mysuru, next to the Palace,” he recalls.

“I had painted a pond on a giant pothole and written ‘Come and See’, which was fixed soon after that,” he adds. Sometime back, he had even painted the broken slabs of a divider on Double Road Flyover in tricolour on the occasion of Independence Day. “I was returning from work when I fell here thanks to the slabs. That’s when I thought I should paint it as it will trigger a reaction.” And it surely did that. 

Over the last few years, artists have constantly been using their skills to present serious issues in a light yet impactful manner. One not only sees wall art depicting issues like poverty, caste system and war brightening the dull walls of the City, but even statues, comics and installations portraying something serious.

Artist Saksham Verma, who is a student of Srishti School of Design and Technology, uses relatable or common elements to reach out to people. This explains his ‘Avatar’ mural in Yelahanka that wages a war against fairness creams and advertisements. “Fairness has always been associated with beauty in India, which is not right,” he explains.

Another popular work of his is the wall painting of Dr Rajkumar on Kamaraj Road and he says that he enjoys using common concepts especially film-related ones to reach out to people. “I want to be simple and reduce complexity. Everyone relates to films so it becomes easy to draw people’s attention to the problems we face,” he adds.

Shreyansh Gupta, who also painted the Dr Rajkumar mural along with Saksham, often likes to use his art for a serious cause. Being a strong lover of animals, he recently did a work called ‘Zebra Decoded’. “It had a zebra morphing out of a barcode. It was a protest against cruelty towards animals and telling people not to buy animal products. I wanted to show that an organism’s life is more important than money,” says Shreyansh. Another work of his that caught everyone’s attention was a water tank in Yelahanka. “In these days of water shortage, I was amused to see a tank lying unused in the middle of a busy area. So I just used it as a wall and made a window on it,” he adds.

When an issue is depicted visually, it attracts more attention, according to Shwetha Elisha, who is doing her Masters in Visual Arts in Chitrakala Parishath. The artist recently designed a comic book for children to inculcate the habit of reading in them. “In a world filled with TV and games, people rarely read. So I thought a comic like this will help in the long run. As part of it, I wrote a few poems too,” she notes.

With art becoming more than something of just a visual appeal, these young artists are putting their best foot forward.  While Saksham likes to call himself a “social activist” thanks to his art, Shreyansh feels that art is a “simpler and more peaceful way to protest.” As Baadal points out, “Art is extremely necessary as it can bring about a change.”

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(Published 14 July 2015, 14:41 IST)

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