Uncovering the Hidden Artists of Bangalore

Ana Holschuh
Aug 25, 2017 · 7 min read
Aravani Art Project’s first mural

“We exist”: these are the words that accompany Aravani Art Project’s first mural in Bangalore, India. On the highway running next to Majestic Metro Station, there is an island of land amid an ocean of rickshaws and motorbikes. On this strip, the eventual slow tides of traffic let one appreciate the four-story tall mural portrait of a transgender person for a few minutes at a time. The geometric hibiscus flowers — a hermaphrodite species — seem to become one with the subject: a strong-jawed woman with beard hair pointing out. The most fluid of gender portrayals has been captured within carefully measured triangular shapes.

Across from it stands a piece by Ullas Hydoor, another renowned street artist, that depicts the founder of Bangalore, Kempe Gowda, with paralleled geometric formations. Even though these artists did not collaborate with each other, their designs have created one coherent part of the highway where commuters can sense a fleeting moment of togetherness.

Women walking past Ullas Hydoor’s piece

The 29-year-old founder of Aravani Art Project, Poornima Sukumar, twirls her hair around her pinky finger, as if wanting to add one more ring to her already abundant collection. As she screams over the traffic into her phone, she simultaneously points an auto-rickshaw driver to her next destination and to a distant mural outside of the metro station.

Aravani Art Project, originated in January, 2016, is a transgender street artwork collective led by a team of two women and two transgender people. As one of the first transgender street art groups in India, it has not only become a safe space for transgender people to interact with the public but also created new job opportunities. Transgender people are always involved in the painting process, and are monetarily compensated for their time. A mural usually takes four days to complete, and anyone walking by is welcome to join in.

Sukumar funded this collective after filming the documentary “We Did Not Fall from the Sky,” which left her yearning to build deeper relationships with the transgender community. Throughout the process of filming, transgender people were her subjects: people she was taking information from but not aiding to the extent she ideally wanted to.

“I didn’t see any giving back,” Sukumar explained. “They don’t value conversations; they have better problems to worry about.” After having only scratched the surface of the reality faced by the transgender community, Sukumar sought to create a space where they were as much involved in the artwork as depicted within it. With Aravani Art Project, transgender people have the chance to be artists, and actively paint portraits and spread personal concerns on public walls. “It’s so nice to see how they open up because they know you don’t have an agenda,” Sukumar said.

Although she used to be a painter, she admitted that she “didn’t even know what street art was back in 2011.” Now, she is being commercially recruited to paint murals around the city.

Even though most artists value having power over their brushstrokes, Sukumar reflected, “I am good at letting people in, and simplifying my designs.” Sadhna Prasad, the 25-year-old co-founder, is an illustrator who is in charge of the design aspect of the project. She commented that Sukumar “got very comfortable with giving her work to other people,” and it helped her see how “it is extremely liberating to feel that you can teach someone a skill, and they will feel empowered by it.”

Sadhna Prasad, the co-founder of Aravani Art Project, standing in front of her mural

Prasad met Sukumar during The Roadtrip Experience Project, where 16 creative individuals were chosen to collaborate in a foreign country. This has set the tone for making Aravani a traveling collective — one that has already covered walls throughout Sri Lanka, Tamil Nadu, and even an abandoned town in the Himalayas.

Before any mural is designed, Prasad and Sukumar meet with the transgender community in each city they are visiting and learn which issue is particularly prevalent in the local community. Then, they conjure a short two-phrase quote that captures the communal voice. Therefore, the transgender voice does not become a generalized one, but an individual and site-specific one. Each message will be written in two languages, the first one always being the local language, since “it’s important that it’s not only in English,” said Sukumar.

Many of Aravani’s designs are composed of geometric lines, giving confidence to each individual to fill out shapes with their own choice of color. Prasad noted that while painting “there’s no man or woman.” There is simply a paintbrush, and a wall to be covered. “When they are painting, the questions are not only limited to how they became transgender and what are their struggles,” Prasad said. “Instead, it’s: what’s your favorite color?”

Artwork found in the Cubbon Park Metro Station

“The concept of street artwork as a hipster thing is new,” reflected Shruti Sunderraman, a writer for the Bangalore-based publication The Ladies Finger, and it is making the city’s visual landscape more varied — since it used to be “just Bollywood movie posters.” Street art is also booming within the new metro stations. Yash Bhandari, a 25-year-old muralist who works for Art in Transit, coordinates many of the works in Cubbon Park and Chickpete Station. Art in Transit is a collective started by the Srishti Institue of Art & Technology, and looks to convert a dead space into a functional and purposeful one.

“It would be an artwork just to get permission,” Bhandari said while observing a crumbling wall on the outskirts of Chickpete Station. In India, street artwork is a controlled and organized form of art that involves obtaining the approval of the Karnataka state government.

The street art scene in Bangalore is “a bit of a paradox,” said Maureen Gonsalves, the cultural coordinator of the Goethe Institut/Max Mueller, since it does not involve vandalism in the slightest.

“In Germany, I prefer to call myself a vandal. Here I’m just an artist,” said Peter Strohmann on an Urban Avantgarde informational packet. Urban Avantgarde was an event organized by the Goethe Institut in collaboration with Jaaga and the government of Karnataka in 2012. This event brought together various German street artists with Indian artists, and has filled the Malleswaram neighborhood with various murals.

“The whole idea of public art is to let the public break free from their scheduled day,” said Richard Antony, a Srishti student artist, on the collective’s website. His piece, titled Play, gives you the 3D illusion of standing on platforms that, when missed, cause you to fall into eternal darkness. He has done so by placing a reflective surface around a column in the metro, as well as a sticker that follows a video-game style. The rules of the game are lined up right after a commuter walks down the stairs, and some arrows will guide them to the reflective surface. While looking at oneself in the reflection, the sticker one is standing on seems to have truly transported one to another alternate world where a faulty jump means “game over.” It was designed to be done in 7 minutes, which is the waiting time for commuters.

Another interactive piece that can be found in Cubbon Park station is interpreting poetry as objects. Poets collaborated with artists to create short stories on the steps that can be read both walking up or down the stairs. A large majority of the art pieces in the metro are meant to keep commuters active and curious about their surroundings. A geometric piece that looks perfectly clear from a distance becomes foggy and unpleasant the closer you get, suggesting that the closer one is to truth, the less you see it.

Bhandari said that the best artwork is done by the commuters with pieces of chalk, giving everyone a chance to be an artist. Small chalkboards can be found sporadically around the metro station, and are usually filled with little doodles that blend with one another.

The station’s artists are also known for the “re-purposing of the machine, re-inventing the history,” said Bhandari. One of the machines that have been re-used is a weighing machine; it has been hacked to produce old Bangalore stories instead of a record of your weight. Art in Transit is considering opening a museum for the sole purpose of showcasing re-purposed machines, and “set the tone for the city to look at objects and factories,” said Bhandari.

“There can never be one story, there are always multiple stories,” said Bhandari. As the collective reflects on where to expand next, Bhandari points his finger, dipped in bright-blue acrylic paint, towards the street, where they could inhabit the neighboring space outside of the metro station with more artwork. While observing the surroundings, Bhandari’s vision halts when observing a military airplane sculpture that hints at the military presence in Bangalore, India: “We definitely know what not to make.”

Murals found on Church Street

Writing India

Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts Summer 2017 abroad, Writing India: Explorations in Non-Fiction & Multiplicity

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Ana Holschuh

Written by

Integrated Design & Global Studies — The New School.

Writing India

Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts Summer 2017 abroad, Writing India: Explorations in Non-Fiction & Multiplicity

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