Indian artists who hit their stride in Hong Kong: ‘I had the chance to turn into a butterfly’
- A number of Hong Kong-based artists with Indian origins are having an impact on the city’s art scene, from public art to art-styled fashion
- The first Indian wall mural festival was held in the city in January, organised by a local retailer that promotes India’s traditional art forms
When she’s not painting walls, Riya Chandiramani says she’s breaking them down. An artist born and raised in Hong Kong to Indian immigrant parents, and an advocate for gender equality and women’s empowerment, Chandiramani, 26, says her art challenges restrictive ideas that define how women “should” be.
She is now working on her first solo series called Cereal Box, a commentary on consumerism, nourishment and the female body.
Chandiramani is one of a number of Hong Kong artists with Indian origins who are having an impact on the city’s art scene – from public art to art-styled fashion – but she hasn’t always questioned social mores.
Growing up, she preferred to conform, she says, and in her senior year of college she struggled with an eating disorder.
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In the spring of 2017, during her final year at the University of Pennsylvania in the US city of Philadelphia, Chandiramani took a class on murals.
“Philadelphia is covered with beautiful murals that initially started in the ’80s as an anti-graffiti programme with a mission to combat crime and foster education and community,” she says. “The class taught us about the significance of public art in building community and in shaping a city and its culture.”
When she returned to Hong Kong in 2018, she was happy to find another burgeoning street art movement. While working at the Women’s Foundation, a non-profit organisation promoting gender equality, she took part in the street art festival HKWalls. “I painted a wall outside Craftissimo, a popular craft beer store, in Sheung Wan,” she says.
The Sheung Wan wall was Chandiramani’s first big solo project. Until then, she’d worked on many personal commissions, including custom-painting sneakers, alcohol bottles, handbags and homewares.
Painting the Sheung Wan wall changed her life, Chandiramani says. “I decided to paint the ‘Pursuit of Happiness’, a topic stemming from my Vedanta classes [a philosophy which expresses the principles of life and living], about how our egoistic selves seek happiness from material things, status and power,” she says.
In 2018, she published her first children’s book, Koki’s Voice, which she wrote and illustrated herself. The following year, she spoke about her journey and the intersection of art and mental health at the Affordable Art Fair in Hong Kong.
Kashmira Mehta Doshi, 34, is another Hong Kong-based artist with Indian roots. Best known for her paintings Absolute Mumbai and Absolute Hong Kong, which afford a visual journey into the architecture, lifestyle and fashion of both of the cities she has called home, Doshi grew up in Mumbai, where she went to art school and then took a marketing degree. Marriage brought her to Hong Kong in 2014, where she began reconnecting with art.
Doshi has experimented with a wide range of styles and explored oil paints, watercolours, acrylic and ink. She’s studied human anatomy and calligraphy, and has done portraits and nudes. “I do not believe in restricting myself to any particular genre or theme,” she says.
Sketching is the style she finds most captivating. “To me, sketching is like breathing,” she says. “It’s pure drawing; very close to my heart.”
Absolute Hong Kong and Absolute Mumbai both feature intensive black sketching on white canvas, every centimetre filled with scenes from daily life and much-loved local haunts.
“I’m not a world traveller, but I do love exploring the cities I live in,” Doshi says. “I observe the minutest of details and that reflects in my art. I’ve spent my life in these two cities, evolving, growing, achieving, failing and healing. I definitely wanted to let those emotions out on canvas.
“I believe Mumbai is a city that never lets you sleep because it teaches you to dream and work towards achieving it,” she adds. “In Mumbai as a child, I was always filled with dreams that I wanted to achieve. But in those days, I was like the caterpillar, still struggling. In Hong Kong, I had the chance to turn into a butterfly and chase those dreams to make them come true.”
Doshi’s current passion lies in guiding artists as much as it does in creating. Today, she teaches art to students of all ages and runs the Kashunutz Art Studio in Tsim Sha Tsui.
In a different type of art endeavour, Memeraki is a Hong Kong-based label that sells wooden clutch handbags painted in an Indian style.
Founded by Yosha Gupta, 38, who was born in northern India but has lived in Hong Kong for 11 years, Memeraki is intended to help revive traditional hand-painted Indian folk art by fusing contemporary fashion with folk culture. Ultimately, Gupta wants this fusion to help create sustainable livelihoods for traditional and folk artists.
With the support of the Indian consulate in Hong Kong and other sponsors, Memeraki organised the first Indian wall mural festival, Kathaa, in the city in January. Four folk artists from India visited Hong Kong and painted wall murals at Bharat Bhawan – the official residence of the Indian consul-general – and at cafes and restaurants Treehouse, Teakha, Sabor and Gunpowder.
During the Covid-19 lockdown, Memeraki ran traditional and folk art workshops online for an international audience. Artists from smaller towns and villages across India were able to teach art to anyone across the world.
“Our participants have been from the USA, UK, Australia, France, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sweden, Malaysia, Bangladesh, New Zealand and India, and all of this has spread from our previous customers and via word of mouth,” Gupta says. “We have organised close to 100 workshops in the last three-and-a-half months attended by more than 1,000 adults and children.”
Venkat Shyam, 50, based in the Indian city of Bhopal and author of the book Finding My Way, taught central Indian Gond painting in his Memeraki workshop. “I’ve worked with Memeraki for many years,” he says.
Before he turned to art in the 1990s, Shyam struggled. “I’ve driven a rickshaw, cooked, done household work, was a signboard painter.” He worked 18-hour days to earn extra money so he could travel to exhibitions to promote his Gond tribal art. Today his paintings are frequently featured in exhibitions in Mumbai and Delhi and he is a regular on the Hong Kong arts scene.
Shyam was one of the mural painters who visited Hong Kong in January; he painted a man making many cups of tea at Teakha cafe.
Much of his work is about the need to protect the environment, like his Mother Earth painting, which is now a part of the CSMVS Children’s Museum in Mumbai.
“Humans believe that everything belongs to them, when in reality everything we have – animals, plants, insects – it all belongs to Mother Earth” he says. “We should stop being selfish and protect her.”