The issues with state-sponsored street art
Image for representation only.
| Photo Credit: The Hindu
As India’s cities groan and roads struggle to accommodate increasing users and their needs, state-sponsored public art initiatives along the streets merit interrogation. Lately, commissioned artists have been adorning walls with vignettes that barely relate to these streets and local environments, such as collages of leaping dolphins, implausibly large flowers, Mickey Mouse, and romanticised stereotypes such as village women at wells. Hurriedly executed with industrial pigments, these paintings have begun to cover every available surface along the streets in some cities. They have transformed the facades of houses, schools, hospitals, government buildings, and religious institutions. Ostensibly goaded by a desire to turn heteroge...