Tribute | Remembering visionary artist Hanif Kureshi who took art to India’s streets

Hanif Kureshi
| Picture Credit score: particular association

Within the organised chaos that’s Chennai’s Kannagi Nagar stands a white facade of a three-storey constructing that captures ephemerality like no different. It carries a mural in gray that solely seems because the solar goes up. The art work is an clever shadow play that embodies a disaster that the resettlement locality, some 20-odd kilometres from Chennai metropolis, is confronted with yearly: water scarcity. The anticipate the picture each morning mirrors the neighborhood’s anticipate water. Right here, time repeats itself. For Daku (interprets to bandit) aka Hanif Kureshi, time has all the time been a conduit for expression; a medium by his personal admission. 

In 2022, the streets of Fountainhas in Goa acquired launched to dancing alphabets that play to the tune of the solar. He in contrast the catastrophic pandemic to the Spanish flu, pointing fingers at how historical past has this behavior of repeating itself. 

However one can not assist however surprise if his favoured medium may have been kinder, as the country now mourns the artist’s passing following a year-long battle with lung cancer. He was 41. 

“Daku. What a badass, proper? To make such political, highly effective and fearless public artwork interventions in India at a time when public artwork was not even a factor!,” asks artist Shilo Suleiman, including, “What a visionary builder and mentor to a neighborhood.”

Artist Guido Van Helten spent days photographing native girls on the docks. Their huge portraits grace the warehouse the place individuals like them have carried on their conventional enterprise for the 142 years of Sassoon Dock’s existence. The artistic lead for this challenge was Hanif Kureshi
| Picture Credit score:
particular association

For Shilo, Hanif was a mentor who rapidly grew to become a buddy. “What he has performed with the road artwork neighborhood, and the way he introduced us all collectively, and introduced alternatives and infrastructure to the road artwork world, is a universe in itself.” 

Hanif is remembered by a consortium of adjectives. Voracious. Inclusive. Loving. Passionate. A freaking genius! His work, proper from the early 2000s, is a tour-de-force within the modern Indian artwork ecosystem. From humble beginnings in Talaja, Gujarat, he pioneered a number of actions that introduced the ‘regional’ to the mainstream; he unapologetically and intentionally broke out of the white dice whereas additionally recognising the significance of making an artwork market that the nation can name its personal; and most significantly he took artwork to the streets. Loudly. Typically as massive flex boards that announce his arrival and at others, on cease indicators with clear warnings: ‘Cease Gossiping,’ one such signal learn in Delhi. 

“But, he had a means of sporting his artwork so gently,” reminisces Riyaz Amlani, a longtime collaborator and buddy. Hanif’s HandpaintedType is a pathbreaker challenge that to this present day makes an attempt to protect the typographic apply of signal painters throughout India. “One of many first issues I keep in mind was how passionate he was about typography. It was certainly one of his biggest loves. He was an analogue mind in a digital world. His love for individuals who labored with their arms was unmatched,” remembers Riyaz. The artist was a breath of recent air in a up to date artwork world that was nonetheless struggling to stability the duality of conventional and fashionable aesthetics. 

Daku’s work at MUAF 2022-2023,
| Picture Credit score:
St+artwork India

With the thought of neighborhood at its centre, the ambitious St+art India project that he co-founded with Guilia Ambrogi, Arjun Bahl, Akshat Nauriyal and Thanish Thomas in 2013, was the primary formal step to democratising artwork by means of public-facing murals. In 2014, India’s first ever artwork district sprung up in Delhi’s Lodhi Colony. 

Guilia remembers, “The primary few initiatives had been performed all by ourselves. We had been carrying paint buckets, pasting posters and transporting tools. No person knew what we had been doing. It nearly appeared like road artwork was a sport then, you understand. And it was lovely, as a result of it was a bunch of loopy individuals collectively. The power would by no means cease.”

There’s additionally a quieter aspect to Hanif. A few of Guilia’s fondest recollections are in Paris when the duo spent hours roaming round its streets, in curious pursuit of public artwork with their respective companions. And time spent of their first studio in Haus Khaz village by the lake. 

At Khairadabad Flyover
| Picture Credit score:
particular association

As years glided by and St+artwork India grew as an establishment, Guilia says that their relationship grew to become all about balancing concepts. “I’ve by no means heard Hanif complaining. Even after the prognosis, he by no means complained. He was the solar! So stuffed with power.” 

Shilo remembers a dialog she had with Hanif earlier in January. “Even by means of his deteriorating situation, we’ve got had lengthy conversations on how artists really feel as if we’re immortal. We work laborious, barely sleep and as containers of artistic imaginative and prescient, we frequently neglect that we’re human, and wish a routine. It’s my largest takeaway following this loss.”