![\"Hanif](\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/theme\/images\/th-online\/1x1_spacer.png\" "\\"Hanif")
<\/picture><\/div>\nIn the organised chaos that is Chennai\u2019s Kannagi Nagar stands a white facade of a three-storey building that captures ephemerality like no other. It carries a mural in grey that only appears as the sun goes up. The artwork is an intelligent shadow play that embodies a crisis that the resettlement locality, some 20-odd kilometres from Chennai city, is faced with every year: water shortage. The wait for the image every morning mirrors the neighborhood\u2019s wait for water. Here, time repeats itself. For Daku (translates to bandit) aka Hanif Kureshi, time has always been a conduit for expression; a medium by his own admission.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 2022, the streets of Fountainhas in Goa got introduced to dancing alphabets that play to the tune of the sun. He compared the catastrophic pandemic to the Spanish flu, pointing fingers at how history has this habit of repeating itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But one cannot help but wonder if his favoured medium could have been kinder, as the country now mourns the artist\u2019s passing following a year-long battle with lung cancer. He was 41.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cDaku. What a badass, right? To make such political, powerful and fearless public art interventions in India at a time when public art was not even a thing!,\u201d asks artist Shilo Suleiman, adding, \u201cWhat a visionary builder and mentor to a community.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/div>\n\nArtist Guido Van Helten spent days photographing local women at the docks. Their vast portraits grace the warehouse where people like them have carried on their traditional business for the 142 years of Sassoon Dock\u2019s existence.\u00a0The creative lead for this project was Hanif Kureshi
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<\/div>\n For Shilo, Hanif was a mentor who quickly became a friend. \u201cWhat he has done with the street art community, and how he brought us all together, and brought opportunities and infrastructure to the street art world, is a universe in itself.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Hanif is remembered by a consortium of adjectives. Voracious. Inclusive. Loving. Passionate. A freaking genius! His work, right from the early 2000s, is a tour-de-force in the contemporary Indian art ecosystem. From humble beginnings in Talaja, Gujarat, he pioneered multiple movements that brought the \u2018regional\u2019 to the mainstream; he unapologetically and deliberately broke out of the white cube while also recognising the importance of creating an art market that the country can call its own; and most importantly he took art to the streets. Loudly. Sometimes as large flex boards that announce his arrival and at others, on stop signs with clear warnings: \u2018Stop Gossiping,\u2019 one such sign read in Delhi.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYet, he had a way of wearing his<\/i> art so gently,\u201d reminisces Riyaz Amlani, a longtime collaborator and friend. Hanif\u2019s HandpaintedType is a pathbreaker project that to this day attempts to preserve the typographic practice of sign painters across India. \u201cOne of the first things I remember was how passionate he was about typography. It was one of his greatest loves. He was an analogue brain in a digital world. His love for people who worked with their hands was unmatched,\u201d recalls Riyaz. The artist was a breath of fresh air in a contemporary art world that was still struggling to balance the duality of traditional and modern aesthetics.\u00a0<\/p>\n \nDaku\u2019s work at MUAF 2022-2023, <\/div>\n With the idea of community at its centre, the ambitious St+art India project that he co-founded with Guilia Ambrogi, Arjun Bahl, Akshat Nauriyal and Thanish Thomas in 2013, was the first formal step to democratising art through public-facing murals. In 2014, India\u2019s first ever art district sprung up in Delhi\u2019s Lodhi Colony.\u00a0<\/p>\n Guilia recalls, \u201cThe first few projects were done all by ourselves. We were carrying paint buckets, pasting posters and transporting equipment. Nobody knew what we were doing. It almost seemed like street art was a game then, you know. And it was beautiful, because it was a bunch of crazy people together. The energy would never stop.\u201d<\/p>\n There is also a quieter side to Hanif. Some of Guilia\u2019s fondest memories are in Paris when the duo spent hours roaming around its streets, in curious pursuit of public art with their respective partners. And time spent in their first studio in Haus Khaz village by the lake.\u00a0<\/p>\n \nAt Khairadabad Flyover <\/div>\n As years went by and St+art India grew as an institution, Guilia says that their relationship became all about balancing ideas. \u201cI have never heard Hanif complaining. Even after the\u00a0diagnosis, he never complained. He was the sun! So full of energy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Shilo recalls a conversation she had with Hanif earlier in January. \u201cEven through his deteriorating condition, we have had long conversations on how artists feel as though we are immortal. We work hard, barely sleep and as containers of creative vision, we often forget that we are human, and need a routine. It\u2019s my biggest takeaway following this loss.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
![\"Daku\u2019s](\"https:\/\/th-i.thgim.com\/public\/incoming\/eqjgm2\/article68681604.ece\/alternates\/FREE_1200\/Daku2.jpg\" "\\"Daku\u2019s")
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