Edgy makeover by ‘underground’ graffiti team
T3K or the Third Kind Graffiti crew comprising artists named A-Kill, Dibs 132, E-Poch and Siken-2 are underground artists claiming to be the only city-based graffiti crew and the brains behind the colourful artworks one can find in public spots in Chennai.
By : migrator
Update: 2016-10-01 05:25 GMT
Chennai
The concept of graffiti that has evolved from the pop culture, where artists would paint their names, often pseudonyms, on the subway trains in the west, is now catching up fast in the southern metro - Chennai. Graffiti were eventually banned and the artists moved to the local walls.
“Our journey was something similar. We started in 2013 by painting abandoned walls. Staying true to the graffiti style, we wrote our pseudonyms on the walls. This was, of course, illegal and people started noticing us and we had to stop,” says Dibs 132, a freelance artist by the day, who also teaches arts in school. “We were young and just wanted to express and the city was our canvas. Beautification of the city walls was just an unintentional outcome of that.
Hip-hop culture
Their idea was to promote the hip-hop culture. “People relate it only music and dance but hip-hop comprises rapping, b’boying, grafitti and DJ-ing. Two of our crew members also rap and produce music ,” he adds.
However, things changed in 2015, when Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Chennai organised city’s first street art festival called ‘Conquer the concrete’, where they had invited eight well-known street artists from Germany, USA and Spain. They took over the streets and transformed some iconic spots. “I came across one of them while they were painting the wall. We graphic artists have something called the Black Book, where we have our designs and ask other designers to express themselves on it. I showed him the book and he was impressed to see the that there exists a graffiti culture in the city,” says Dibs 132.
Street art
This changed the way people look at graffiti. “By then we had moved to street art, as in we started taking permission of the corporation and officials before starting work. We were even approached by many city councillors to do up the public walls in some areas. We do commercial projects too for gaming centres, restaurants etc,” says 25-year-old A-Kill, adding, “We are not like other groups who pick up walls outside schools to do art to give out social messages.
We treat the walls as a canvas and express with paints on them. When it comes to graffiti, there are rules to be followed.
There is a hierarchy and a code of principal,” explains A-Kill.
They also collaborate with other artists. Unlike other groups who use paints, they use spray cans that cost around Rs 500 per can.
“It can cost us a minimum of Rs 10,000 to paint a wall. It goes, up depending on the size of the wall. Often the concillors sponsor the paint but often, we have to shell out money from our pockets,” says Siken-2, a graffiti writer. “I play with the fonts, which is the essence of the art form as people started playing with them. It takes a lot of time and practice to master it.”
T3K crew members want to promote the local culture by using Tamil. “When it comes to English fonts, there is a scope to play with it in myriad ways.. But when it comes to Tamil, the options are limited as the alphabet completely changes when we do major modifications,” says Dibs 132.
Apart from that they celebrate the essence of the city, “For instance, in one of our artwork in Besant Nagar, we have an auto driver who says ‘Veetla SolituVantiya!’. We also work on themes that complements the neighbourhood. Through this, we want to put the city in the international graffiti scene. We want to do something in North Chennai that has peculiar charm to it and we are also conducting workshops for schools.”
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