This Sunday, after having seen multiple updates on St. Art Delhi’s Facebook page, I decided to go and check out the latest art that was dotting walls across Mumbai. If you’ve read my previous pieces you will know that graffiti and me have a strong relationship, of course, it’s one sided for now! Read more here.

At the entrance to Pali Village is this black and white large artwork by Amitabh. He was still painting when I visited on Sunday, but said he would be done by eod. This is the wall of Hawaiin Shack. Amitabh doesn’t believe in just art for art’s sake. “There needs to be a meaning. You can’t just get out here and start painting.” While he didn’t clearly explain the meaning of this one, or have a final name for it, this work would symbolise the constant threat of man versus nature, of new fighting the old… our constant war! And this sits at the entrance to Pali Village… to portray the few villages we have in Mumbai where simple, one-storey remnants of the past are threatened daily by the bulldozing population of the present. [Current update: It’s been title ‘much much’ – say it in Hindi to understand]

Along the same wall, adjacent to this was an artist spraying up a cat on a dark background of this city.

now titled ‘much much’ by amitabh kumar

chalk drawings, look at the top bit.

white on black or black on white?

this image is now complete, though still to go back and check it out

this took him three days

A little further down you have a wall that’s been taken over by Tika and Anpu. Anpu uses a recurrent cat theme in most of her works [Delhi janta, you can catch her work in your city]. Here the walls of an animal salon have been spruced up with this image of a cat and large and graceful metallic flowers. Look into the window and you might just catch a large labrador with a blow dryer on his fur, as I did. At that corner, look to your left and crane your neck. You’ll see Yantr (of Kochi Fame; read more here.) bringing out his love for the mechanisation of our world! Or is it hate? 🙂 He is really tough to interview; preferring to not interact with you directly. So I have an entire ‘interview’ with him completed through email and maybe by his agent.

tika + anpu’s artwork

the man and the machine: yantr working his magic!

That is all we saw this weekend, but there was lovely work happening at St. Jude Bakery that I missed out on. This streetart festival is on till 30th November and there is a great line-up of artists. Unfortunately, the facebook page / twitter site doesn’t clearly tell you who all are there and what’s going on. Eitherways, come next Sunday and you know where to find me… muddling around the bylanes of Bandra searching for new expressions. If you cannot make it but would love to follow it, catch me and the photographs on Facebook and Instagram.

If you are new to Graffiti in India, then definitely read this article I wrote for The Alternative. I’d like to think of it as a solid introduction piece to Indian graffiti and why it’s different from graffiti across the world. Express on!

Strain your neck and loo