Hanif Kureshi (1982-2024): Bringing art out into the open
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. "The streets are always calling… . Come, let’s play," said Hanif Kureshi during a 2019-TEDx talk.
The softspoken multidisciplinary artist, who died earlier this week after a year-and-a-half-long battle with lung cancer, was always interested in finding the “potential behind the walls". In a bid to move art out of the white cube space, out in the open, Kureshi—born in 1982 in Palitana, Gujarat— co-founded St+art India Foundation, which has since become the country’s biggest street art festival. This effort to connect regular folk with artists— whose practices spanned graffiti, typography, installation, video, and more—will remain his most enduring legacy.
“His curiosity and strength is what I will miss the most," says Giulia Ambrogi, co-founder of St+art, on a call from Brazil. Kureshi and Ambrogi met online in 2012 when the former approached her for an “idea" to bring the streets of India alive with art. They became each other’s sounding boards.
A year later, “on a foggy, cold day in December", Ambrogi arrived in India and they met in Hauz Khas Village in a makeshift office. Today, St+art India has become a major festival in Asia, attracting artists and art enthusiasts from all over the world. Incidentally, that makeshift office, with wooden benches and plastic-torn sheets, was located on the terrace of a building that would house Social two years later—one of the successful brands from Riyaaz Amlani’s Impresario Entertainment & Hospitality.
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