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"The streets are always calling… . Come, let’s play," said Hanif Kureshi during a 2019-TEDx talk. The softspoken multidisciplinary artist, who died earlier this week after a year-and-a-half-long battle with lung cancer, was always interested in finding the “potential behind the walls". In a bid to move art out of the white cube space, out in the open, Kureshi—born in 1982 in Palitana, Gujarat— co-founded St+art India Foundation, which has since become the country’s biggest street art festival. This effort to connect regular folk with artists— whose practices spanned graffiti, typography, installation, video, and more—will remain his most enduring legacy.
"The streets are always calling… . Come, let’s play," said Hanif Kureshi during a 2019-TEDx talk. The softspoken multidisciplinary artist, who died earlier this week after a year-and-a-half-long battle with lung cancer, was always interested in finding the “potential behind the walls". In a bid to move art out of the white cube space, out in the open, Kureshi—born in 1982 in Palitana, Gujarat— co-founded St+art India Foundation, which has since become the country’s biggest street art festival. This effort to connect regular folk with artists— whose practices spanned graffiti, typography, installation, video, and more—will remain his most enduring legacy.
“His curiosity and strength is what I will miss the most," says Giulia Ambrogi, co-founder of St+art, on a call from Brazil. Kureshi and Ambrogi met online in 2012 when the former approached her for an “idea" to bring the streets of India alive with art. They became each other’s sounding boards. A year later, “on a foggy, cold day in December", Ambrogi arrived in India and they met in Hauz Khas Village in a makeshift office. Today, St+art India has become a major festival in Asia, attracting artists and art enthusiasts from all over the world.
“His curiosity and strength is what I will miss the most," says Giulia Ambrogi, co-founder of St+art, on a call from Brazil. Kureshi and Ambrogi met online in 2012 when the former approached her for an “idea" to bring the streets of India alive with art. They became each other’s sounding boards. A year later, “on a foggy, cold day in December", Ambrogi arrived in India and they met in Hauz Khas Village in a makeshift office. Today, St+art India has become a major festival in Asia, attracting artists and art enthusiasts from all over the world.
Incidentally, that makeshift office, with wooden benches and plastic-torn sheets, was located on the terrace of a building that would house Social two years later—one of the successful brands from Riyaaz Amlani’s Impresario Entertainment & Hospitality. In fact, it was Kureshi’s Guerilla Art—a studio that works with graphic designers, architects, graffiti writers, sign painters, type designers on projects—that worked on Social’s branding. Amlani, founder and director, Impresario Entertainment & Hospitality, was hugely impressed with Kureshi’s work for Indigo airlines, and was looking to create a restaurant brand for Gen Z. He found Kureshi’s “simple, to-the-point aesthetic" very innovative and charming.
Social became Kureshi’s first client and the association continued till his passing, with the artist having worked on design for the brand’s Lucknow outpost this year. Amlani finds parallels between his journey and Kureshi’s—two small-town boys coming to big cities with a grand vision. “The alienation you feel in elitist societies, especially when you come from small places and are starting out with nothing but dreams—that resonated with both of us," he says. Social’s branding, with its use of Hindi words, stood out. This stemmed from Kureshi’s personal mission to document the lost art of typography in India.
V. Sunil, whose team at the advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy was behind the ‘Make in India’ campaign, remembers hiring “this unassuming college kid, who walked into his office with a big portfolio" back in Ogilvy. A graduate from the Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara, Kureshi worked at Ogilvy between 2003-09, and then at Wieden+Kennedy from 2009 to 2013, before branching out on his own. At W+K, Kureshi’s work as art director—his interest in signage, fonts, and typography— shone. “I could sense the hunger to excel right away," says Sunil.
Kureshi, though, wore his talent lightly. In fact, many remember him for his simplicity. It helped that he had a calm demeanour in meetings, be it with bureaucrats, government officials, corporates, or anyone else. “Give me a chance to paint the wall. If you don’t like it, I’ll whitewash it with my money," he would tell bureaucrats who often would not understand Kureshi’s idea of a street art festival. Arjun Bahl, another of St+art India’s co-founders, remembers how Kureshi always dressed in casuals, even while meeting top government officials. But such was his conviction that in 2014, St+art India got permission to create a 152-feet-tall mural of Mahatma Gandhi at the police headquarters in Delhi.
Hendrick ECB, a German street artist, worked with Indian muralist Anpu on the piece. “The scale of the project was so huge that it required the tallest industrial crane available in India to complete it," states a piece on Google Art and Culture. A little later, Kureshi would create his typography-led mural ‘Chaar Diwari’, based on a poem by one of the inmates of Tihar Jail, New Delhi. The challenge was to get street art acknowledged as a legitimate visual art form and for it not to be seen as vandalism. In 2013, Bahl and Kureshi approached Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi, where Robin Mallick—then-programme director (South Asia)—decided to fund the festival. “Many people used to come to our office with proposals, but these guys were meticulous in their approach. Hanif had a brilliant, artistic mind while Arjun knew the business well," says Mallick.
Eventually, with funds in place, the first edition of the festival took place in the urban village of Shahpur Jat in Delhi that same year. “I was amazed at the vision, because it meant knocking on the doors of bureaucrats, people staying in the area. Some may have shouted at them initially, but Hanif calmed them all with his unfazed attitude," he recalls. Much later, these open-air works ended up becoming landmarks, with people saying, ‘Meet me where the cat is’—a reference to a huge cat painted by Anpu.
Gallerist Joe Cyril finds it tough to talk about Hanif bhai, as he was fondly called, in the past tense. “He is original in thought, a complete revolutionary in his approach, and genuinely wants art to reach the person on the street," he says. Cyril met Kureshi three years ago to become the head of Gallery XXL, a young gallery space in Mumbai dedicated to urban contemporary art—including street art—started by the folks at St+art India Foundation in 2023. “His words, ‘Come to our side, Joe, let’s dream together,’ still ring in my ears," he says.
Kureshi was Daku, a hitherto anonymous street artist, whose pseudonym meant ‘bandit’. He went out at night to reclaim the streets and walls. Though he’s no more, his legacy lives on. In the concrete jungles we live in, Kureshi’s art, and that of the many artists he’s invited over the years for St+art, will always offer colour, hope and succour.
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