After having received a positive response from people in Mumbai and Hyderabad, St+art India
Foundation, which is associated with the public art movement in India, took up
the public art beautification project of Panjim during the Serendipity Arts
Festival (SAF) 2017. St+art India Foundation is an organisation formed on the
principle of ‘Art for All’ and works on art projects in public spaces. The
foundation aims to make art accessible to a wider audience by taking it out of
the conventional gallery space and embedding it within the cities we live in –
making art truly democratic and for everyone.
St+art India Foundation in association with Asian Paints aimed
to look at Panjim from individual perspectives of different creative
personalities and their combined effect when all of them were revealed in the
urban landscape. Simultaneously, the Goan perspective is brought out up front.
The public art project aims to discover a side of Goa by putting the focus on
Goan culture out on the streets for the locals and the tourists visiting the
state of Goa.
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“The landscape of Panjim is very different from rest of the
cities in India. St+art Goa has various projects which delved into the
character of the city instead of just painting ‘walls’. We have been very
careful with the kind of content we are putting in public space. We hope to
bring the art alive every year with the Serendipity Arts Festival,” says Hanif
Kureshi, curator of St+art Goa.
Amit Syngle, COO, Asian Paints Ltd. said, “Like every year, we
wanted to add a bit of vibrance to the city and uplift the moods, spirits and
lives of the people. We wanted to take art to the masses and make it accessible
to a wider range of spectators. The idea is to open spaces to dialogues,
conversations and culture creation through the lens of the city.”
With muralists, graphic designer, painters, visual artists and
cutout painters, St+art India Foundation’s intention was to beckon Goa beyond
its beaches and to invite people to immerse themselves in installation and
murals in and around Panjim. Here are the various projects for St+art Goa 2017
as part of Serendipity Arts Festival 2017:
Cutout project
Inspired by the larger than life cutout poster culture in Tamil
Nadu and neighbouring states, St+art envisioned a series of portraits of local
Goan people spread across Goa – greeting people on their way from the airport
to the city. The idea was to celebrate local Goan personalities through a
medium which was only restricted to famous personalities. These 40ft high
cutouts have been painted by Bollywood poster artists from Mumbai. Celebrated
at one point, these artists have lost their livelihood with the arrival of
digital printing.
Murals
Additionally, India and international muralists were in Goa to
paint large size murals and explore their version of Goa. Parag Sonaghare
(India), Guido van Helten (Australia) and Curiot & Romina Romanelli (Latin
American duo) Do+Khatra (India) are some of the artists who were invited to
create these murals.
Proverb project
Proverbs are words of wisdom, passed through generations. Mindful
of the increasing communication gap between the young and old generation,
St+art had invited sign painting artists, to work on a series of proverbs from
Goa, translating them into vibrant art pieces to engage the audience. The team
at at St+art got an opportunity to use closed shutters as canvases for
proverbs. The proverb project offers a two-way opportunity to generate
curiosity and initiate dialogue among the young and old; as also revive sign
painting as an artform.
A4 Art project
As part of SAF 2017, St+art also invited graphic designers to
interpret their version of Goa, which was spread across the city as A4 sized
posters. The A4 Art Project started as a satirical protest against ‘A4
vandalism’ – something which has been a part of our urban landscape. Various
graphic artists were invited to participate in the project.
Guerrilla projections
St+art
also filled the city with guerrilla projections across the city. The objective
was to travel with portable machinery to map video movies, artworks, texts,
graffiti, etc on idle building facades as a sort of projection bombing. Turning
buildings into screens for relevant messages or visuals on spots that are
otherwise out of reach, a visually powerful action that will bring art to shine
in the night. For the same, Tue Busride studio has collaborated with
underground artist DAKU to explore the possibilities of this new media medium
which is extremely effective in the way in which it reaches and surprises the
audience.
