Re-imagining the everyday: Street art in an ‘urban village’, Delhi

Abstract

The proposed article questions how a group of women (age 15–20 years) from different ethnic backgrounds in working-class settlement in New Delhi, who individually and collectively tries to reclaim and create their own spaces through wall painting on the street. This is to respond and to adapt to the pressures of the constantly changing urban ecology, within the larger contemporary discourses and experiences of risk and vulnerability negotiated by them in public space. Thus the article foregrounds the ‘relational’ approach and collaborative ethic with the trajectory of ‘dialogue’ as key method within the socially engaged art project. The idea of reclaiming spaces to negotiate the changes of local ecology, which accommodates the change of perception of men regarding women in public, has been initiated through creating wall painting in the streets. A wall painting initiative evolved through series of discussion sessions with a group of young women in Khirki and Hauz Rani, an urban village in New Delhi. The idea was to paint a series of ordinary women doing daily activities and engaging in work that is customarily done by men in the locality. The intent was to draw men on the street into a dialogue about the gender equality in terms of the acceptance of women in male-associated professions, as well as a dialogue about the visibility of women in public spaces.