Taking on social issues with brave art

Through The Fearless Collective, multimedia artist Shilo Shiv Suleman is rooting for change, one mural at a time

When more than 65,000 people showed up to be a part of the Burning Man Festival in 2014, a week-long free-spirited celebration of art and music, they knew they should expect good things. But no one could have foreseen 20 giant lotuses blooming in the semi-arid land in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.

Every time one touched a stem sprouting from these 10-14-feet high installations, it would pick up one’s pulse via sensors and make the lotuses bloom. At a time, 40 people could touch this piece called Pulse and Bloom and see their heartbeats pulsate through LED-loaded structures.

It’s safe to say that the artist behind the project, Shilo Shiv Suleman, believes in the power of the collective consciousness. This belief found root in her after the infamous rape case of 2012 in New Delhi, when Suleman, who was in the city for a wedding, found herself surrounded by candles and placards at India Gate as the country mourned for “Nirbhaya”. “For the first time in India, I saw people out on the streets and there was this incredible energy of thousands and thousands of people,” says the 27-year-old. But what followed disturbed her.

“There was this wave of fear mongering, a constant rhetoric of ‘don’ts’. The fear was counter-productive to the larger change we needed,” says Suleman, elaborating on what led her to form The Fearless Collective. With Fearless, Suleman collaborates with other artists, activists and volunteers to engage in storytelling in public places. One of their earliest projects was “Paint the Town Pink” for the Gulabi Gang art project.

Suleman has dabbled with illustrating children’s book illustrator, an installation artist and now as “Shilo of The Fearless Collective”. Her murals by the Ganga, in Mumbai’s Dharavi and on the streets of Bengaluru are replete with elements of Magical Realism.

With locals in Nepal

Last year in Nepal, after the devastating earthquake, Suleman worked with local thangka artistes to get temple art out on Kathmandu’s streets while holding workshops on “inherited fears”. “We inherit homes and jewels, but what about the emotions and fears that we take on,” asks Suleman, who believes that these things make us who we are.

Though gender-based issues continue to fuel their fire, volunteers or what Suleman calls Fearless farishtas (angels), also work with other subjects. After Nepal, Suleman was in Pakistan, interacting with communities across cities; one of these was in Lyari, where children are exposed to gang violence and grenades. “People told me don’t go to Pakistan, it’s dangerous. In Pakistan, people told me don’t go to Lyari, it’s dangerous. But I have found that there’s love wherever we go.”

The idea of taking Fearless to Pakistan was “exciting, because it is a blend of street art and feminist movements,” says Nida Mushtaq, a sexual rights activist and advocate who invited Suleman to Pakistan. “We could create beauty and make the streets safe for public conversations, while exploring the deep and dark issues embedded in our society,” she adds.

Soon enough, on the walls of a grimy car-wash in Rawalpindi, an unusual image appeared. First came the painting of a larger-than-life yellow bike, followed by a radiant portrait of Bubbli Mallik of the Khwaja-sira or transgender community. While you admire her long flowing hair, unmissable in the portrait is the stubble on Mallik’s face, besides masculine hands on the two-wheeler.

This mural was to “normalise” the transgender community. While there is a mysterious belief in the power of their prayers, this belief stems from a place of fear, explains Suleman. Young children, old men, and college girls came together to paint and write out prayers on the roses “an Indian artist” had drawn on the walls.

Three years after Fearless began, Suleman is working on giving the collective a more formal structure as they expand to Pakistan, Lebanon and a host of other countries with over 600 farishtas. “The whole world is our oyster. Cuba, Brazil, Morocco — we just have to decide where we’ll go next and make it work.”