Is it time for an Indian Banksy? The list of issues in need of public scrutiny is growing by the day but Indian street art continues to play it safe

Some years ago, in the U.S., I remember attending a charity auction organised by the Philadelphia Arts League. Local artists were invited to display and sell their works by placing them on a conveyor belt that moved slowly towards a shredder. If a piece was picked by a buyer, the proceeds went to the children’s hospital; if not, it was shredded into the garbage bin. The artist merely watched helplessly.

London-based street artist Banksy similarly sold a painting at a Sotheby’s auction for £1 million. As soon as the bid was accepted and the hammer came down, the artwork slipped out of its frame and shredded onto the floor. The self-destruction ironically increased the artistic value of the painting which was renamed Love is in the Bin.

Whether the shredding was an artistic act done to add theatrical value to the painting, it is hard to say, but in all likelihood it was part of Banksy’s plan to ensure that art is not taken too seriously.

His bigger works are altogether different. In 2017, in West Bank, Banksy established the Walled Off Hotel, a temporary art exhibit on the tragedy of Palestine. A play on New York’s Waldorf chain, the hotel looks right into Israel’s West Barrier and proudly boasts the worst view in the world. Part art, part politics, part satire, the artwork has to date attracted over 140,000 visitors.

Essential public vandalism

Without a doubt, Banksy is today one of the most important and prolific street artists of our time. In August 2024, nine animal-related artworks appeared in quick succession on London walls. A gorilla at the entrance to the local zoo, two elephants stretching trunks out of building windows, pigeons on an imaginary wire — the graphic simplicity of much of the work is often undercut by scathing satire. Two surveillance cameras strut about like pigeons on the sidewalk; on a wall in Ukraine, a young boy wrestles a bully to the ground; another is seen painting a sign ‘Graffiti is a Crime’. It is hard to qualify Banksy’s work — site-specific and done at night — as art or vandalism; but as a critic noted, it is the most essential form of public vandalism.

Sadly, such vandalism falls entirely out of the framework of art in India. How well would Banksy do in a country where the primary showcase for public art is a triptych of the Mahabharata in a metro station, or a bronze statue of Shivaji at a roundabout? Would he be allowed to run his painterly fingers on the walls surrounding Churchgate Station in Mumbai, or to deface Delhi’s India Gate? Could he in fact write a cryptic message about Indian democracy on the dome of Rashtrapati Bhavan, or wrap the new Parliament building in plastic. Unlikely.

Evocative messaging

For the past decade, despite increasing popularity and visibility, Indian street art has been a reluctant commentator in the public sphere, even though it originally evolved from the political graffiti of Kolkata. Since then it has progressed to three-dimensional wall paintings, quotations, and many forms of caricature and large-scale imagery, visible in many cities. In Delhi’s Lodhi Colony, high-walled arched colonial compounds are filled with a bright colour palette that skilfully disguises the fraying neutrality of the old colonial architecture. At Kala Ghoda in Mumbai, and annual street art festivals in Bengaluru, Kochi and Pune, portraits of famous personalities cut across building facades, trees spread their painted branches around corner walls; murals even appear on private properties that abut the road. Talented local artists display their work on many varied themes with an unusually rich style of pictorial representation.

Banksy’s work, by contrast is remarkably spare — relying on the directness of its evocative message. It is unusual in content, display and execution as much as it is a product of its surprising location. As always, the artist remains hidden in plain sight. Everyone knows him, but publicly, he remains invisible, going about his nightly production without frill or fuss. A pandemic poster, ‘Do not wash your hands’ — is it social comment or satire?; Girl with Balloon — graphic art or cultural artefact?; surveillance cameras posing as street pigeons — public protest or political comment? The calculated absurdity of the artist’s position is baffling, clever, disturbing, always surprising, but rarely self-conscious. When will it appear next, where, and in what medium…?

As the Indian art season reopens, our own ill-tempered cities — desolate, bereft of landscape, and falling apart — cry out for such expression. Religion, separatism, censorship, communal rage, growing illiteracy, bureaucratic apathy, political arrogance, business bluster, media manipulation, the list of Indian issues in need of public scrutiny grows day by day. But an Indian Banksy refuses to step out of the shadows.

The writer is an architect.

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