The utility of beauty: The antinomies of street art in Delhi

In the last decade, the city of Delhi has witnessed a surge in urban artistic practice – particularly street art – that draws its conceptual and art-historical ‘virtue’ from being in the public sphere. The changing socio-economic, infrastructural and aesthetic set-up of the city bears many similarities to what has been called the cultural regeneration of cities across the globe. Interpreting it as symptomatic of the neo-liberalization of the Indian city, this article examines the spatial implications of the burgeoning contemporary street art movement in Delhi. It contextualizes the art movement within place-making initiatives in Indian cities that have been attempting to attract the middle-class to city spaces to cater to their consumption patterns. The article suggests that there are two ways in which commissioned street art in neoliberal Delhi closely ties up with the neoliberal agenda of uneven redevelopment and regeneration in the city: (a) by instrumentalizing its form to revitalize decrepit areas that need capital investment in order to garner cultural tourism and trigger capital investment; and (b) by invoking a narrative of beautification and cleanliness that has been seen to emerge from a dominantly middle-class perspective in Indian cities. Looking at the unique ways in which urban space in Delhi interacts with local-political situations and responds to such place-making initiatives, the article attempts to interrogate what art-led gentrification implies in the economic and sociopolitical context of cities of the global South.