Art goes underground

CHENNAI: Art is seen behind the museum glass. Art is also seen on the walls of the streets we walk. This time around, art explodes in vivacious bursts of artistic expression in the unlikeliest of places in the city — the basement parking lot of VR Chennai. As part of the line-up in the Madras Art Guild 2020 (MAG), the Basement Art Project is a refreshing take on public and interactive artwork, with four city-based artists drawing on personal styles to spruce up their designated walls under the central theme of ‘Sustainability’. 

Earlier this week, as the four walls in the basement parking lot transformed into the canvas, the artists invited to paint on them were Upasana Asrani of Studio Saks, SS Karthik of 108 Collective, Mohan Babu, and Lotuz Head.

For Upasana Asrani, artist and curator of the display, it’s not just a two-week project but a manifestation of the philosophy she holds dear in her artwork — inclusivity and accessibility. “I’m a firm believer that art shouldn’t just exist within the four walls of an art gallery, but out and about for people from all walks of life to experience it,” she explains. “So when VR Chennai approached me to curate the artwork for the MAG installations and participate in the Basement Art Project, this was the perspective that drew me in,” she adds. 

Asrani’s wall is painted black, and on it, doodles cover the surface area, making it an almost cartoonistic approach to the wall art. And as she carries on doodling with her 11-year-old son Amrit Asrani following suit, her approach becomes so much clearer. “It’s not just an art piece,” she says, “I want him to learn and champion art and sustainability in his own right.” A few metres away, a sharp contrast to Upasana’s wall, Mohan Babu’s work screams of a much brighter colour palette with greens and shades of red flowing across the piece he calls ‘Pasumai Ulagam’. An artist with over 30 years of experience in painting movie posters and set design, he and his childhood friend Bala Mohan have made this wall their own with effortless creativity visible in the colour gradation. 

The ambitious art project also saw an enthusiastic collaboration between art director SS Karthik and street artist Lotuz Head for the very first time. Taking a spiritual angle to the theme of sustainability, the duo created a composition combining the best of both their worlds aptly titled ‘Avatars’. “We’ve taken inspiration from the concept of the origin, integration, and how all of it is one. We don’t want to integrate too much text into it, but rather leave it for people to see and reflect,” says Karthik. Not a stranger to having his art in VR Chennai, his art installation of an emoticon made out of bottles also sits in the entrance of the mall. With all the art pieces located at various spots in the parking lot, you’re inevitably going to run into one of them. So maybe take a moment, step back and experience it for yourself.