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Date/Time
Date(s) - 13/02/2018 - 23/02/2018
All Day
Categories
ST+ART – CHANDIGARH
13.02.18 – 23.02.18
In its first edition of the St+art festival, Chandigarh will play host to a series of artworks realised by a Franco Indian collaboration between artistic duo Lek & Sowat and Hanif Kureshi. The aim is to revive the diminishing tradition of Sign Painting in India, while co-aligning it with that of Western Europe. The artists will work on a series of proverbs from France and India, translating them into vibrant art pieces which will engage local audiences in a very personal yet universal manner. The idea is to explore central and popular locations of the city, to create ground-level artworks that recall the traditions and impact of rangoli, to become part of the market and community-centre spaces, bring people together and have a long lasting impression on the fabric of the city.
ARTISTS
HANIF KURESHI, DELHI, INDIA
Hanif Kureshi is an independent designer and artist working with type and typography on different media and scales. His current project, handpaintedtype.com, attempts to conserve and archive the vernacular street typography of India. Through such projects, Kureshi’s attempt is to bring back attention to such arts, and their validity in representing diverse technologies of graphic design in India. His work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Centre Pompidou Paris, Triennle Design Museum, Milan among others. Kureshi is one of the leading street artists in India and also the cofounder of St+art India Foundation.
LEK & SOWAT, FRANCE
Fred Visualek & Sowat, known as Da Mental Vaporz, are jointly involved in the practice of Urbex, which is that of taking over places that are derelict but have a powerful history. They use typographical motifs traditionally used in graffiti in a form of architecturally influenced abstraction. Sowat is a Franco-American graffiti artist who matured in the surroundings of Marseille and Los Angeles, inspired by Chaz Bojorquez, one of the major figures in Californian graffiti who developed “Cholo writing”, a calligraphy created in the 1940s and intended to mark out the territories of Latino gangs. Lek is from the first generation of Parisian graffiti artists. He learnt his craft in the legendary area between La Chapelle and Stalingrad where French street culture emerged.