Tag: Bollywood Art Project

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Hum log

One year of Disobedience

Art collective Visual Disobedience has enjoyed a good run since its 2012 beginning, by firmly planting the ‘inclusive art’ idea.
by Medha Kulkarni

A little over a year ago, on September 22, 2012, an idea was born in the form of a small initiative. The idea was humble but ambitious: have a space dedicated to young and upcoming artists, one that challenged the notions of ‘established’ art, and make it accessible to all. Since its inception, Visual Disobedience (VD), an initiative of Mumbai-based social media agency Flarepath, has already fulfilled this primary aim and is steadily growing with one of the widest range of artists working in several media. It also boasts of having completed numerous projects and been part of some interesting collaborations.

Jasjyot Singh Hans - Adorn“Art can and should be consumed by everybody. Art is not just meant for the gallery space, it’s an important part of culture, like music or film, and it’s unfair to restrict it to fancy galleries and auction houses. That’s the premise we work from. We want to challenge the notions of ‘high’ and ‘low’ and create an environment where Art is accessible to all,” says Suprateek Chatterjee (27), Editor at VD.

“Also for young artists, there is very little institutional support, it is difficult for them to get their work out there and again that’s where VD comes in. We want to be a platform for artists to be able to showcase their work with a wide audience,” says Suprateek.

Visual Disobedience has worked with numerous artists and has collaborated with NH7, Godrej India Culture Labs, Miko Kuro and Queer Ink, among others.

“Things are changing fast. Thanks to the Internet, we’ve managed to grow into one of the biggest artist collectives in the country and all this visibility is leading towards very interesting collaborations and ideas,” explains Suprateek. “We get so many emails every day, from artists based in various places and doing all kinds of interesting work. Our team sifts through each of these and we select the works to be featured on the website.”

Visual Disobedience also works with their artists to create custom pieces for clients, Sulafest and NH7, Pune (2012) being some of them. The initiative also recently collaborated with Sachin muralRanjit Dahiya, known for the ‘Bollywood Art Project’, to create the stunning Sachin Tendulkar mural at MIG Cricket Club, Bandra. ”It was born out of the desire to create a permanent tribute to one of our greatest sports icons,” says Suprateek when asked how the project came about. “It’s definitely the tallest, if not the largest, mural in Mumbai,” he adds proudly.

Collaborative public art projects, which take art out of the traditional gallery setting and puts in the public sphere, are how VD aims at engaging the public with Art. It helps to chip away at the notion that art is reserved for the ‘high-brow’ society and creates a culture of art in a city. Keeping this agenda in mind, Visual Disobedience is also planning a series of pop-up markets in the coming few months. ”Again, it’s all about making art accessible. Our aim is to present as diverse a range of works, in terms of artists and media, and ensure that nothing is priced above Rs 5,000,” explains Suprateek.

Visual Disobedience is steadily and rather rapidly challenging the notion that art is only for the rich. It is also helping to propel several artists, who otherwise would have had to struggle harder to become visible, into the Art orbit, and simultaneously creating spaces where people can engage with Art in various ways. The collective’s rapidly increasing popularity is proof that these notions are outdated and that urban India is increasingly art savvy.

 

If you want to know more about VD, check out their website. 

(Pictures courtesy Visual Disobedience)

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Hum log

Bollywood’s poster boy

Ranjit Dahiya poses in front of the first wall he ever painted, at Carter Road.
Artist, free hand painter Ranjit Dahiya is bringing Bollywood alive in Mumbai for a year, one wall at a time.
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

Ranjit Dahiya is 33, charming and quite direct. He pays full attention when you’re speaking, is disarmingly honest, and wears his small town origins with enviable confidence. “I come from a small village in Haryana, and I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do as a young boy,” he remembers. “Art happened to me because it was an avenue that I decided to explore on a whim. I didn’t know any English, I didn’t know what art was supposed to be.” And yet, he graduated from National Institute of Design (NID) Delhi and holds a Fine Arts degree from a Chandigarh college – but everything’s come with a bit of a struggle.

Today, Ranjit is celebrated as an artist, especially since he founded and started the Bollywood Art Project (BAP), a community visual art project under which he hand paints popular people and moments in Hindi cinema on walls that are located in public spaces. He stays at Bandra and has also worked on walls in this suburb, though he is looking at ‘good walls’ in other places as well. “I came to Mumbai in 2008 because I got a job as a graphic designer with a website here,” he says. “I had just passed from NID. When I came to Mumbai, I realised that there were not enough art installations or paintings in the city. So I became very interested with The Wall Project, and met up with them to understand what they were doing.”

Through the Wall Project, Ranjit got the chance to visit Paris and later, Le Rochelle, both times to paint Bollywood-themed canvases. “I painted at 12′ x 32′ poster of Amitabh Bachchan at Paris, and I finished it in four days. The greatest moment for me was when Mr Bachchan himself arrived at the fest and congratulated me on my work – I have always been a great fan!” he beams.

His two trips made him realise that people abroad really loved Bollywood. “They like the style, the culture, the drama. This year, I started the BAP because I wanted to celebrate the spirit of Bollywood in my own way, in the city that I live in,” he explains.

Childhood scenes

Ranjit’s parents, both employed with the Government, expectedly wanted him to get an education and a stable job, but he flunked his college exams and his father told him to go tend to the fields that the family owned. “I actually loved going to the fields,” he smiles. “But my father wondered what I would do with my life. Then a relative once met me and said that I could learn how to whitewash walls from him. Soon, I was working with different contractors and whitewashing walls; for each job, I would get Rs 40.”

A few months later, he met a school friend who was studying to be an engineer. “He asked me what I was doing, and was stunned with my answer. He asked me if I had heard of Fine Arts. I said I hadn’t, and the conversation was promptly forgotten,” he says. At the time, the local school wanted a Saraswati painting done in its premises, and Ranjit volunteered. “People said, ‘What do you know about painting?’, but I had always loved drawing and painting, even when I was very young. I did a 6′ x 4′ Saraswati painting on a wall, and everybody liked it,” he remembers.

Spurred by this, he decided to visit a relative in Panipat, who promised to teach him how to write with paints and do other paint work. “I sat for my failed college year during this time, and returned after a year to apprentice with a local painter. You know, doing ‘Mera gaon, mera desh‘ kind of stuff. Then one day I remembered my friend and that he’d said something about Fine Art. I decided to check it out,” he says. After obtaining some basic information on Fine Art courses, I sat for and passed the entrance exam and got admission to a college in Chandigarh.”

“I was the small town boy from the village, I didn’t know what ‘art’ was, and my medium of instruction was Hindi,” he remembers. “It was tough, but I slowly got the hang of it. In my fourth year, I heard of this place called NID (National Institute of Design), and I asked a senior, ‘Sir, what is NID?’ His prompt reply was, ‘Forget it, you can never go there,'” Ranjit chuckles.

Adamant to get into NID, he sat for their entrance exam and failed spectacularly. “My lack of English had let me down. I wondered what to do next, getting really confused about several available options. Finally, I burnt all the college prospectuses I had gathered, and reapplied to NID.” In the meantime, however, he put in a solid year of English learning. “I would read the newspapers and whichever books I could find. Soon, I began to understand the language, at least enough to know what was being said. I had flunked the entrance exam because I hadn’t understood the questions,” he says.

The NID life

The next time he appeared for the NID exam, he understood the questions, though his English was still questionable. “I cleared the exam, but I continued to flounder in the course because I had no idea about art. Finally, the faculty asked me to withdraw from the programme, because I didn’t have the required aesthetics and depth, or to take an extra year on my Foundation Course. I chose the latter option,” he says.

After spending over two years in one batch and submitting a live project comprising a 206-page document in English, plus an ‘identity’ for a museum in Pune, Ranjit was convocated in 2007. This year, he started the BAP “out of passion”. He says, “The best thing about BAP was that it helped me get back to painting. I had been working full time, but a job makes me complacent. So I take up freelance work and I founded by own company, Digital Moustache.”

The Bollywood connect

“I’ve always loved Bollywood films, and when I was very young, I’d painted a gate with the face of a hero from a film magazine,” he remembers. “I hadn’t realised that the connect with films was so strong, strong enough for me to want to be associated with Bollywood in some capacity. Cinema builds our culture and perceptions, and it is a record of our lives and the times we live in. I am enjoying the BAP because I love Bollywood,” he explains.

His dream is to revive the Bollywood posters industry, and he is currently scouting for the best wall to paint yesteryear dancer and actor Helen on. “Many people criticise my work, saying that what I do is just copy from somewhere, there is no originality. I don’t care about all of this as long as I am enjoying my work. There are a lot more people who are enjoying my work, and their appreciation gives me a real high,” he grins.

 

 

Categories
Diaries

Celebration of the year

Nothing celebrates Mumbai like cinema can. The Bollywood Art Project does just that, with an emphasis on community visual art.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Concluding part of the Yearender Diaries

You can’t really divorce Mumbai from its film industry. It’s like one is a function of the other, inviting every person for a tantalising glimpse of the fabled world that is a remote as it is seemingly within grasp. And whatever the degree of trouble we’re in, or whatever the level of our happiness, we are diverted fully by the escapism of Bollywood. Heck, sometimes we’re even totally divorced from our own realities by those in Hindi films.

So what better way to celebrate the city than to celebrate Bollywood?

That’s how the Bollywood Art Project (BAP) was born.

Started this year by artist Ranjit Dahiya (read up on him here), the BAP is “a social community project which aims to remind, recognise and exhibit Bollywood in various art forms.” Speaking to The Metrognome, Ranjit said, “I came to Mumbai in 2008 and started living here and working with a website. I was always in awe of Bollywood, and I loved the brand of escapism our films provided – only in our films could you find a hero who would still be alive after being shot five times!”

Ranjit was invited to Paris in 2009 as part of a cultural fest, in which the Hindi film industry was to be honoured. Later, he had a Bollywood showing in another French city. “This made me understand the impact that our films have even on people outside India, because at both places, there was a lot of interest and knowledge about Hindi films and its actors and directors. When I returned home, I felt that we should celebrate Bollywood in Mumbai before we take it to the world,” recalls Ranjit.

The idea for this celebration came only this year. “Since the film industry celebrates 100 years of cinema next year, I decided to do something to contribute to the celebration in my own way,” Ranjit says. The specific idea for this, however, came after the death of yesteryear superstar Rajesh Khanna in July this year, when Ranjit painted a full wall depicting Khanna in all his glory, at Bandstand, Bandra (see pic on left). “It was well-received, and several people remarked that nobody was painting film posters any more,” he muses. “The city lacks the sort of visual art culture that it rightly deserves. Apart from The Wall Project, there is not much happening in terms of visual art anywhere in Mumbai. Besides, there is an instant connect between the city and popular faces in cinema. And when I paint on walls in public spaces, the area comes alive.”

The BAP aims to create visual spaces for people to come and glimpse popular moments and people in Hindi cinema, and hopefully, offer a few minutes of nostalgia as well. “The only film-related landmarks in the city are stars’ homes and film studios, and the general public can’t access both. So the BAP aims to make cinema instantly accessible to the people, and to promote a culture of discussion about cinema on the streets. It’s a community project, so everybody’s invited to come take a look and participate,” Ranjit says. “When I had finished painting Anarkali (featuring Beena Rai and Pradeep Kumar), a Muslim woman stood staring at the painting and whispered, ‘Mashallah! Yeh aapne banaya? (Did you make this?)’ It feels great to have people stop and watch, it adds a whole new vibe to an area,” he says.

For know the latest work under BAP and to sponsor the project, check out www.facebook.com/BollywoodArtProject.

(Pictures courtesy Ranjit Dahiya. Featured image by The Metrognome)

‘Diaries’ is a series of stories on one theme. The Yearender Diaries seek to capture the most telling moments, happenings and people in the city this year.

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