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Swiss Graphic Artists Roam Delhi Streets In Project To Capture India's Less Visited SightsBy Dr arvind, Section Local Artists and Performances
Three men from faraway Switzerland are walking the streets of Delhi, visiting markets and discovering bylanes the elite never visit. All in an effort to bring us sights, scenes and smells of our own city.
Sometimes it takes a foreigner to make us see our neighbourhood, even our country, in a different light. And this was the idea behind this project by publishers Phantom Ville. The Swiss men are graphic novelists and illustrators, who will create stories based on their experiences here. Simultaneously, a few Indian graphic artists on visit to Zurich will write their own accounts of that city. The stories from both groups will be published by Phantom Ville in September as a two-volume book of 120 pages each. "It can be very interesting to have an outsider's perspective on things we have taken for granted. So we sent Indian artist Harsho Mohan Chattoraj to Zurich for a month in November. Another artist, Shekhar Mukherjee, an animation coordinator at the National institute of Design, is there at present," says Anindo Roy of Phantom Ville, who has been searching for the right men - writers and illustrators - since April 2007. He met prominent Swiss artist Andreas Gefe at a comic book festival in Zurich in April and through him, got to know illustrator Andreas Caprez and his writing part ner Christoph Schuler. All three were roped in for the project. Click on "Full Story" For More...
Gefe, Caprez and Schuler arrived in New Delhi on January 28. By now, they are familiar figures around Lajpat Nagar.
Gefe found the subject for his story within two days - on the pavements of Central Market. "Mehendi artists, their skills, their trade and their hidden stories are so fascinating," he says. He has befriended a few of them and have visited them at their homes. Known for his sombre works, Gefe will debut as a writer-cum-illustrator of graphic novels in this project. Caprez and Schuler under took walking expeditions, one of which stretched from Lajpat Nagar to Nizamuddin, covered in five hours. "We saw people living beside the tracks at Lajpat Nagar railway station. Mothers would hurriedly pull children off the rails before a train arrived," says Schuler. Roy waves away questions about if the novels will repeat clichés about India and Switzerland. "The cultural connection will help artists draw parallels or find contradictions with their own societies. For instance, not many people in upper class neighbourhoods in Lajpat Nagar even know that there is a railway station there," he adds. Since they did not know anything about Indian stereotypes to begin with, they could only offer their own insights, smiles Gefe. One of the most interesting drawings in Caprez's book is of a driver standing beside a parked car in front of a gate. "People in cities get driven from one point to another. They miss out a lot of what is between their home and destination," he says. The Swiss group has found the Delhi belly the least of their problems. "There are no cafes here where we can sit and draw. A crowd gathers whenever we take out our drawing tools. It is a friendly crowd, but we cannot concentrate," says Caprez. His illustrations, including a brilliant one of Sufi singers at Nizamuddin, along with those of Gefe and other Swiss and Indian artists, will be exhibited at the launch of the graphic novels. From: The Indian Express, Feb-12-2008
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