Writing on the Wall

The walls in the narrow alleys of Fort Kochi picture a rather odd amalgam, a world where Michael Jackson is not just the King of Pop but also Mohiniyattam; Karl Marx wears a lungi and Kentucky’s Colonel Sanders rustles parottas in his airy mundu. The creator of this strange universe remains unknown. He/she possibly comes out in the dark, working under the starry sky to stick wheat paste posters and go into hiding. “Anonymity or having a different identity could be a refreshing way of looking at things. One can choose to have different or multiple personalities at the same time,” says the artist who works under the pseudonym of GuessWho. The other details — gender, age and background — are unknown.

“The secrecy adds to the mystery. The artwork does the talking and is the only clue to what could be the thought process,” says architect Hari Prasad CP. The 24-year-old architect’s graffiti is painted opposite the work of GuessWho, on a wall which is a few minutes away from Aspinwall House, one of the primary venues of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. Exhibits that comprise the three-month-long Biennale are curated, but not the art it is generating across the city. “The environment is inspirational, it prompts you to pick the brush and just paint your thoughts,” says Hari Prasad. His work, designed with two friends — an architect and a technical analyst — has narrow alleys, intersections and stairways with interlinked paths in black and white.

“Selecting topics is very crucial because they have to be simple and visually familiar subjects, with some local flavour,” adds GuessWho, who always re-imagines popular icons. The works, in fact, point towards an in-depth knowledge of the region. Malayali actor Prem Nazir is James Bond. Marx and Engels dress as Sree Narayana guru and Shankaracharya. Mona Lisa wears a matka on her head.

Not all work has gone down well with the viewers though. Attempts have been made to peel off some GuessWho posters, including a modern retake of Raja Ravi Varma’s Shakuntala, which was considered explicit. “The viewer can change, draw over it or even destroy it completely if he/ she doesn’t like it. It is in your face. That is something very fascinating about graffiti,” says GuessWho.

Vadodara-based artist Piyali Ghosh agrees. “Graffiti reaches out to the masses,” says the MS University postgraduate. Day after the opening of the Biennale, Ghosh was painting her larger-than-life depiction of Bhishma on a bed of arrows. “It’s an episode from the Mahabharata,” she says. Across the road, a young boy painted on a wall, peeps out from a corner. It belongs to another graffiti artist, Tona, who has painted across Fort Kochi. “That’s another thing with the medium — there is space for everyone,” adds Ghosh.