The 3D walk

A group of artists is adding a touch of excitement to sedate public places

Recently, I saw a short video of people jumping on stones in a river to cross the water. They leapt and teetered, sometimes precariously, from one boulder to the next. A common sight, one would imagine. Except that this was in a South Delhi mall and the boulders and stream were part of a unique public art exhibit that created an illusory third dimension on the floor.

"This genre of art is called Anamorphic Art and has been around since the time of Leonardo da Vinci," explains Chand Kumar Dolia, one of the six co-founders of Art Khafism, a quirky artist collective that has been making public artworks across the country for the last two years. The brainchild of five idealistic youngsters studying fine arts in Jamia Millia Islamia University - Hari Kishan, Arun Kumar, Vijay Kumar, Nitin Sharma and Dolia - and Ravi Saini, an engineer, Art Khafism is committed to taking art to the masses. "As art students and art lovers, we were concerned that art is becoming increasingly elitist, relegated to museums and galleries," says Sharma. "That's why we decided to focus on public art that is accessible to all."

Since it was formed in 2013, the collective has exhibited a dozen Anamorphic Artworks from Delhi to Bhubaneswar and Mandi to Guwahati. "3-D illusions on the scale at which we make them tend to draw the public gaze; that's what we want. Our artworks always have a social message, so even as people engage with them, the art forces them to think about social issues," says Kishan. For example, in response to the 2012 Delhi gang-rape case, the group created an artwork of a woman in an open grave by using 5,000 surgical gloves for an international art camp in Guwahati. "The gloves represented the unwanted touches that women suffer in their everyday lives," explains Sharma.

A boat from Art Khafism at a school in Mandi

Another installation the group created in a Delhi mall in October depicts an anonymous Indian soldier with a bloodied eye bandage, signifying the sacrifices - small and big - that soldiers make to defend our country. "It was made to commemorate Kargil Diwas and we were humbled to see that many people had tears in their eyes when they saw it," Sharma says.

Art Khafism’s first attempt at 3D art

Anamorphic Art is technically quite difficult, often breaking several accepted artistic conventions. Also, given that public artworks need to be on a much larger scale than conventional art, the group needs to plan the work and paint in tandem. "We first tried making an ordinary plastic chair together," Dolia recalls. "It was a novel experience to get its planes and shadows right so as to create the illusion of depth," says Sharma. "It spurred us to try more complex subjects." Sadly, most of their works are short-lived. "Unless they're painted on an indoor wall, the artworks begin to fade in days," he smiles ruefully.

In many ways, this genre of art is impermanent, ephemeral like life itself. "But the emotions and thoughts that our artworks provoke live long after the paint has faded away, in the thoughts that they provoke," says Sharma. "That's the magic of our art, and that's what keeps us going."