News, Hyderabad: The art festival that gave New Delhi’s Lodhi Colony a new dimension in regards to its appearance, St+Art India, is now coming to Hyderabad to make its impact in the city. This November, St+Art in association with Art@Telangana and Kalakriti Art Gallery will be hosting a Street Art Festival in Hyderabad.
All those who spoke about the growing absence of street art in Hyderabad can finally heave a sigh of relief and can even paint the town red, or in whatever color they want to, because India’s most famous and largest street art festival, St+Art India is coming to town.
B.V. Papa Rao, trustee of art@telangana said: “From November 1 to 12, St-artindia, art@telangana, and Kalakriti Art Gallery are collaborating to host a street art festival where artists from across the world and the State will choose and execute their work at select locations.”
“We don’t need a gallery. The street is our gallery,” said Hanif Kureshi of St-artindia at an interactive session with city-based artists, laying out his vision for the street art experiment.
“Street art can invigorate the art scene and brings art to the masses. We are doing this because we love the city and we wanted to bring something world class.”
“This project has been in the planning stage since last six months. In Hyderabad, there are only a handful of artists who create street art and that isn’t enough to put Hyderabad on the map of art. So this festival will hopefully bring out the best in the artists here,” says Prashant Lahoti, owner of Kalakriti Art Gallery.
For years now street art in Hyderabad has been looked down upon. It was considered as random paints on walls, but artists here have been struggling to change that image, hopefully, it’ll happen now, believes Laxman Aelay, who is part of Art@Telangana.
“There are two foreign artists and four national artists, and we have asked them to pick about 12 artists from Telangana to execute the project. But the choice will be theirs,” said Mr. Rao.