Street artists turn New Delhi into walking gallery

Art has been taken to the streets in the Indian capital New Delhi, literally. The first edition of the Street Art Delhi Festival is spraying the city with murals and graffiti and changing the texture of the city. While walking on streets in New Delhi, you will be greeted by flyovers and grey skies. But a group of youngsters have made the Indian capital their canvas. New Delhi's first street art festival has changed the city with murals and graffiti and added the much needed colour for the city. Sixty artists from India and around the world have converged to give the city a dose of serious colour. Brainchild of Hanif Kureshi, the street art festival is an effort to make art more public in India. "Everything in Delhi is grey... I think it's high time that it needs colour, and with something like this we can make it a little more different than what Delhi is," Kureshi said. The festival has made the Indian capital brighter. The murals are on walls in urban villages in New Delhi. The artists have also managed to paint the high security prison - Tihar Jail. What stands out though is a massive mural of Mahatma Gandhi on one of the walls of the New Delhi Police Headquarters.' Delhi's street art festival is transforming the dull and grey walls of the city. Many of these walls have been badly maintained, others have never been painted. These young individuals hope that with this particular festival they can literally leave their mark on Delhi. One of the challenges that the organisers faced is convincing people and administration about how this could have an impact. Artez is an artist from Serbia. He says what's refreshing is that the country knows nothing about street art and that means prejudices are left far behind. "People could not understand why would somebody paint on a side of a building. So I would have to explain that it's a part of a festival and it is for art. Many of those people couldn’t understand that you just do it for the sake of art, not to earn something," Artez said. In India, where the walls usually feature advertising for political parties and other posters, these pieces of art are a breath of fresh air. New Delhi's street art festival is an effort to get art out in the open in a country where it is largely hidden in galleries and is considered a luxury of the super rich.