Solomon Souza’s vibrant murals in Goa
We meet the man behind bright murals — of local icons like poet Eunice de Souza and jazz musician Chic Chocolate — seen across villages in North Goa. The London-born Jerusalem-based artist’s project, Icon, under curator Vivek Menezes’ Mundo Goa project, was part of the 2019 Serendipity Arts Festival. For Solomon, street art is a medium “to bring colour to people’s lives”. “If it changes someone’s perception about graffiti, then that’s a good thing,” says the grandson of Francis Newton Souza, the seminal modernist painter and founder of the Progressive Artists Movement of the 1940s.
From Egg House in NYC (with its giant egg crates and a pool filled with white and yellow balls) to the All Avocado Museum (with walls made from avo skin) in NYC, we try and understand why these millennial-friendly pop-up museums are popular. Also referred to as Instagrammable museums and selfie factories, these pop-ups (averaging six months in one city), can be toured in less than 45 minutes, and are designed to be photo perfect.
Design dialogues with Humberto Campana
With clients as varied as Disney, Kanye West and Louis Vuitton, the lawyer-turned-designer believes creativity is making bridges between disciplines. We look at how repurposed wood scraps, bamboo, ropes, rag dolls, plastic tubes and ecological fur go into the designs at Estudio Campana, that Humberto runs along with his brother Fernando. The duo also loves to co-opt and modernise local techniques for conceptual pieces, like the new Sereia Pirarucu lounge chair — made from Pirarucu leather, the discarded skin of the giant Amazonian fish.
Art and culture have always had champions, but the last decade or so has seen a spurt in ideas, in initiatives, in cultural entrepreneurs. We look at how spaces such as Harkat in Mumbai, Wandering Artist in Chennai, Goa’s The Village Studio, St+art, Azadi Records and Matra Type Walks in New Delhi, are among the next wave of cultural entrepreneurs who are making a case for local voices and ensuring new talent isn’t overlooked.
How performance artist Nikhil Chopra camped at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in September 2019 with the overarching theme of Land Water Sky. He performed live for nine consecutive days and eight nights, in three different spots in the museum — drawing, singing (accompanied by a sound artist), eating, changing costumes and sleeping. “While my work will celebrate the natural landscape, it will also quietly ask, whose land, whose water and whose sky? These questions are becoming very important, especially in the 21st century,” he said in this curtain raiser to the event.
