graffiti that always catches my attention and keeps me revetted. i don’t know if this happens to you, but once i see one piece of graffiti or street art in a city, i start searching all the walls almost frantically. because if there is one piece, there are always more!

i scanned the walls as i made my way from rome to venice years ago, i searched the walls to find graffiti in varanasi, visited the now famous graffiti in bandra, mumbai and was amazed at two sides i saw what with the designer boutiques on one side and the wall art in bylanes of hauz khas, delhi on the other.

i believe graffiti is a form of expression, of rebellion, or maybe just undercurrents that do not come to the fore in a big society. i don’t know how rebellious we are in india – yet. whether it can be seen as a statement on society. but the researcher in me is happy to reach conclusions. graffiti talks to me. it tells me that varanasi has a dichotomy – intense faith on one side and modern expression on the other. it tells me that when people come together beauty blooms as i saw in bandra, where residents and artists came together and covered the walls with art.

a city i did not expect to see graffiti in is kochi.  this is a simple walk-through what i saw…

i first saw the walls springing to life at burgar road. i tried to find a meaning to the first piece – a ‘sea-tiger’ chasing her babies? 

my favourite wall was the aspin wall… there is this whole story on those walls, but i couldn’t understand. maybe it was about man taking over nature? you will find the entire street in pictures below, but my favourite piece is this ‘being’.

some of the walls have deep thought-provoking pieces while others just seem to decorate the walls.

there seems to be a lot of expression on public walls across india, and that got me thinking. in india, people have always decorated walls in the villages with images, thoughts, scenes. even today if you visit some villages you will see beautiful, intricate designs on the wall. in that way, wall art is not new, but going out into the public and painting… that is new. and painting non-beauty designs but something that tries to convey a meaning, that is possibly new?

or has this also been around for a long time? does anyone know?

curated for: http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/03/28/street-life/