The wandering artist

Long before Instagram and overused hashtags like #wanderlust, artist Raghava KK embarked on a journey that would make any adventurous millennial envious. As a teenager, his decision to quit formal education and travel the world as a caricaturist in 1997 was #artistgoals. “I travelled all over, backpacking and surviving through [art],” he reveals. “Wherever I went, I’d teach children cartooning. What I’d get in exchange was how to think differently.” Even back then, he found volunteers — he would set up large canvases on the streets of Paris, inviting passers-by to stop and paint with him. Today, such collaborations are on the rise, with people hitting the road for the sake of art and teaming up with artists to work with local communities.

From the Scotsman who crowdsourced his trip to join the Wise Walls initiative in Uttarakhand to the corporate employee on a Himalayan adventure with Roadtrip Experience Project (RTX) to rekindle his creative spirit, the wandering artist’s tribe is eclectic. And they are infusing dilapidated walls across India (and abroad) with colour and hope. “We travel for two reasons,” Raghava, now based in Bengaluru, tells me. “To learn authentically about other realities, and to question our own assumptions about truth. You can’t do that by just taking photos. You have to engage with people, and art is a great opportunity.” Srishti Bakshi concurs. When the Hong Kong-based activist was planning her 3,800 km walk from Kanyakumari to Kashmir late last year, as part of CrossBow Miles — her social enterprise aimed at promoting financial and digital literacy among women — she was looking to transcend linguistic barriers. Bakshi chose wall murals and worked with artists Poornima Sukumar and Ghanapriya, and volunteers who signed up on social media. Together they painted in 30 locations, each inspired by courageous women Bakshi had encountered on her walk.

CrossBow Miles' mural in Delhi  

For volunteers and travellers who join these journeys, the reward is a meaningful experience and the opportunity to meet people with similar interests. “[There are] brands interested in collaborating, bringing money to these kinds of adventures,” RTX founder, Jaytirth Ahya, explains. “I can see the entire ecosystem evolving in India and catching up with what’s happening around the world.” So if you are looking for your next travel adventure, why not consider art with a side of activism? We find out how these collaborations work:

Ghana NB

Four years ago, Chennai-based Ghanapriya, who goes by the name Ghana NB, left a career in design to travel. On a trip to Bhutan in 2014, where she worked as a trainer for the Special Olympics, she started travel sketching as a way to gather her observations. “One thing led to another, and I [started working as a full-time artist and] have been travelling with a one-way ticket since. The days I’ve booked my return, it’s never worked,” she laughs. Ghana started painting walls a year back. “It was a massive upgrade in size and scale, which I love,” she shares. With the unveiling of the 30th wall from CrossBow in Mumbai last week, she resumes her travels with a trip to Ladakh, where she will be curating a culture and folklore documentation workshop in June before she leaves to contribute her time at a special education school in Srinagar, Kashmir. “If you want to volunteer with a community, connect with artists like me; there are many of us,” she says. “Now [with] social media, all you have to do is post your plans, and I’m sure a 100 people will tag someone. Just with CrossBow Miles, I have come back with three big projects.” To apply for the folklore workshop, visit littlelocal.in. Follow Ghana on Instagram @Ghana_nb.

Jaytirth Ahya

Whenever Ahya met creative people, who “according to society, are a little crazy” on his travels, he would wonder what it would be like to “put them together in an SUV and send them to the Himalayas, just to figure out what would happen”. Most people would stop with just the thought, but this tenacious 27-year-old used his skills as a User Experience designer to launch RTX in 2014. Thirty young creative professionals, including artists, filmmakers and designers, travelled to Lahaul and Spiti, with the blessings of three brands — Wildcraft, Red Bull and Carzonrent. En route, the team engaged with local communities, collaborating on music projects, and working on their own creative output. “The logistics was messed up,” Ahya recalls, bashfully confiding that he had never heard of a recce before. “But the curation was phenomenal.” With subsequent RTX projects, including to the Northeast and Sri Lanka (where they created a mural in homage to Colombo), nearly 40 collaborations have sprung between RTXers who previously had not known each other. In June, Ahya (pictured below) is organising four sessions of BHX, The Beachhouse Project, where creative individuals will live together and work with a local community for a week — in Sri Lanka, Nagaland, Rajasthan and Kashmir. At ₹40,000; apply at bhx.theexperience.co.

Poornima Sukumar

In 2012, armed with a degree in painting and an enviable teaching job at NID, Sukumar still felt listless. “I was feeling so stuck in this AC cubicle, I knew I had to quit. I hadn’t done any personal projects and in order to get [clarity], I started travelling without an agenda,” she says. “I was looking for places to travel to, and I wrote an email to the founder of Buda Folklore, an indigenous organisation in the Western Ghats, telling her I would do anything, sweep, swab. I just wanted to get out,” she tells me.

After years of community-based volunteering, Bengaluru-based Sukumar started working on wall art a few years ago, frequently collaborating with Deepak Ramola, the founder of Project Fuel. She also founded the Aravani Art Project, which uses public art as a tool to advocate for transgender rights. Sukumar, who is currently working on a project about disappearing folk recipes in the forests of Karnataka, enjoys the process of spending time with communities before starting the actual painting of a wall. “I take months sometimes, not doing anything but hanging out with them,” she says, revealing that each mural takes about a month or two to plan, prepare and to get funding and local authorisation. She also works closely with volunteers and welcomes inquiries, especially long-term. Details: aravaniartproject.com

Shilo Shiv Suleman

With her firebrand activism, exuberant aesthetic and eclectic personal style, this Bengaluru-based visual artist (left) has emerged as an ambassador for women’s rights in India, taking her work to international venues like Burning Man. Incensed by the protests following the 2012 gang-rape of Jyoti Singh Pandey, she ignored cautionary tales discouraging women from going out in public, and used art to convey her defiance. “I turned up on the streets to reclaim my imagination from fear,” she reveals. Suleman founded The Fearless Collective, and over five years, has worked with local communities in countries like Tunisia, Pakistan and Brazil, converting dilapidated walls into symbols of resistance. Travelling with artists and activists, she invites volunteers to help. A YouTube video of her working in Dharavi, Mumbai, starts with bemused onlookers standing at the fringes, watching her with curiosity. Soon, some of them start picking up paintbrushes, outlining a silhouette here, dabbing some paint there. All of the collective’s murals are participatory. Earlier this year, the collective ran a Kickstarter campaign to raise $30,000 to fund an artists’ residency that would bring together activists and artists from across South Asia, training them to combat discrimination with beauty. Details: fearlesscollective.org