KOZHIKODE: These young artists are ‘trespassing’ into the unique visual memories of commoners and recreating them marvellously on barren walls. Onlookers come to a grinding halt before the street murals, in awe of the local lore being retold in myriad colours.Kozhikode recently bowed to a mural created by Trespassers — a group of 11 young artists — for their story-telling on the long wall of the famed Copra Bazaar. Their art describes the copra-making process, from heaps of coconuts harvested on a riverbank to drying them under a blazing sun. The hard labour involved is brought alive in sparkling colours.
So what is unique about painting on a street wall and not in the comfort of a studio?
“Two things — group work and the genre of street murals — set our creativity apart. Ordinary people are involved in this art,” says Jinil Manikandan, one of the ‘Trespassers’. Jinil explains how a labourer ‘intervened’ in their work telling them that they have to draw coconut trees with deep roots as rodents used to stay within those thickly-connected roots.“That was new information for us. An art enthusiast visiting a gallery won’t get that. The coconut labourer doesn’t visit the gallery either,” he says.
Similarly, an elderly woman stumbled upon their work and asked the artists with excitement, “Shall I paint a bit on your canvas?” Thus appeared a stray dog at one corner of the Copra Bazaar. “Spontaneous work is beautiful and exciting,” beams Vishnupriyan K, another member. “As we are a group, nobody knows in advance what we are going to create or who draws what. We are converging the concepts of 11 artists at a single space. No individual style or pattern appears. The mural changing each moment is a wonderful experience.” But the artists do sit down to discuss what hit them in the local lore, and that forms the foundation.
The Trespassers, who have more than 30 street murals to their credit since 2019, are all alumni of the Sree Sankaracharya Sanskrit University, Kalady, with their maiden work happening at a fish market there.“So far, Trespassers have left their mark in Ernakulam, Malappuram, Wayanad, Kozhikode, Alappuzha and Koyilandy, besides Kalady,” says Jinil. The Lokame Tharavadu work in Alappuzha under the Biennale Foundation is the latest. Ambadi Kannan, Arjun Gopi, Bashar U K, Amith T, Sreerag P, Pranav Prabhakaran, Vishnukumar K K, Sijoy Paulose and Vineetha Wilfred are the other ‘Trespassers’. They work individually too.
While local bodies, government institutions and private parties fund the work on their properties, the group does all other work voluntarily. They use locally available material, mud, fevicol, and acrylic emulsion given by hardware shops. The average cost for a mural comes to `500 per square feet, but it varies according to the space height and the materials used, says Vishnupriyan.