Hyderabad
Maqtha Art District
Located next to the Hussain Sagar lake - one of Hyderabad’s prime locations, the Maqtha neighbourhood provided us with the ideal setting to initiate work on the vision of St+art Hyderabad 2016 - to make the city’s public spaces more interactive. 11 artworks were created in the neighbourhood by national and international artists over a month. Upon completion of artworks, the neighbourhood was launched as India’s third, open-for-all, public art district. More artworks were added to the area in the subsequent editions of the festival.
Artvertising
Street artists Daku and Dia Mehta Bhupal collaborated to create a temporary installation spread across 9 advertising hoardings in key commuter-friendly parts of Hyderabad. The project sought to make an art-centric intervention to deal with the city’s ‘visual pollution’. Designed as an anti-consumerist wake up call, the installation was a commentary on the umpteen advertising hoardings that had taken over the city, altering its outlook.
'WHY' by Daku
Studies estimate there are now 150 million metric tons of plastics in the world's oceans, adversely affecting our marine ecosystem. Plastic-dumping is choking our oceans and governments across nations have begun to take measures to curb the growing menace of plastic pollution. Placed on the Hussain Sagar Lake in Hyderabad, anonymous street artist DAKU’s massive installation titled ‘WHY’ was a response to this perniciously growing problem, created in the form of a giant question mark (‘?’) using close to 3,00,000 recycled plastic bottles!