Not in a thousand years would anyone have thought that ‘funky’ and ‘Supari Tank Mahanagar Palika’ could appear in the same sentence. That they do — marked by German artist Tona’s gigantic ‘Indradhanush’ (rainbow) no less — comes as no surprise to the Supari Tank municipal school’s children, who have been walking past such graphic art over the past month in the Bandra neighbourhood of Mumbai. Tona’s graffiti is one of the 20-odd artworks that make up the St+art Project.
The Mumbai edition, following a similar initiative in Delhi earlier this year, saw the participation of artists from India, Germany, Portugal, Taiwan and Italy, among others. The city’s walls (unblemished by paan spittle) acted as the canvas, allowing the art to reclaim public spaces and popular imagination. The graffiti, though, was part of a larger pool of performances, pop-up art exhibitions and b-boying events held across the city.
St+art India, which put together the project, says this is only the beginning. With graffiti workshops for budding artists, who knows what the city — known as the purveyor of technicolour dreams — will throw up in the coming years.
By Shashi Ashiwal