Chennai gets its first graffiti crew
Four graffiti artists, arguably Chennai's first Graffiti crew, have their names emblazoned on walls all across the city
Chennai: Prasanth Baskaran, 24, remembers the first time he got busted, “I was almost done painting a wall at the Kotturpuram Railway Station when a junior constable caught me at it," he grins. Baskaran was taken to the police station, booked and taken to court, “They levied a fine on me," he recalls.
Luckily the pocket of his paint-flecked jeans yielded ₹ 200. “It was just enough to cover a No Parking fine," he says.
His friend and fellow artist Mohamed Aqueel Hussain, 24 adds: “Every graffiti artist should get busted. It almost is a rite of passage," he says.
The two young men, along with two other city-based graffiti artists, brothers, Deva, 17, and Veera, 19, are part of The Third Kind Graffiti Crew-T3k, arguably Chennai’s first Graffiti crew.
Defacing trees, park benches, electricity poles, public transport and walls with questionable messages (A heart B, God is one and we are sons etc) may not really be a new phenomenon in India. However, graffiti is still a relatively novel spectacle in the country unlike in the West where it emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s.
“People started writing their names on public walls and subway trains: they wanted to leave their mark and see that their name went all over the city. It is normal human instinct, I think," said Baskaran, adding that the art form was often closely associated with the hip-hop movement.
Deva, the youngest member of the crew agrees, “I attended a hip-hop dance class and I heard someone say that there were no graffiti artists in the city. So my brother and I started tagging our names on public walls," he says.
Veera admits to also having got into it due to the hip-hop class. “But I don’t want to comment more about my work," he says
Understandable enough: as Baskaran points out: “It does have elements of vandalism so I can’t go around writing my own name."
All the four write under pseudonyms: Bhaskaran is Dibs 132, Hussain is Akill, Deva is Siken 02 and Veera is Mugen. And these names are now emblazoned on walls all across the city (with permission from the authorities, though, they are quick to add)
Says Hussain, “Graffiti, unlike a lot of other street art, doesn’t really deliver a message. In that sense it is a narcissistic form," he smiles.
According to art historian Georg Zolchow, who curates Chennai’s street art festival, Conquer the Concrete, “True, graffiti doesn’t really have a message: the idea of graffiti is simply painting an invented name in the streets as often and as innovatively as possible. However, in doing so graffiti does question rules and the definition of public spaces. In that sense, it does offer the message of freedom."
He adds that, while compared to graffiti in other parts of the world it is still in its nascent stage in India, there has certainly been an evolution and growth of the art form in the city, “It is really nice to come to a city where graffiti is in its fledging phase," he says, adding, “Right now you can see a lot of influences from other countries in the work out there. However, I do think with time there will be a move towards a more Indian style."
That, says Baskaran, is the dream. “We need to bring in the culture and develop a more Indian style of graffiti," he says, admitting that they try by adding regional motifs and local slang. “People really like that here, I think," he says.
Not everyone does, though. Hussain recalls a recent incident where he was adding a visual component to one of the walls they were working on.
“I had painted a picture of a bald auto-rickshaw driver doing a wheelie when a police officer walked up to me and asked me to change it. He said it looked like former Tamil Nadu chief minister, M. Karunanidhi," he says, sounding a trifle miffed. Then he brightens up and admits, “I just added lots of hair."
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