Hanif Kureshi

Hanif Kureshi (12 October 1982 – 22 September 2024), also known by the graffiti name Daku, was an Indian artist, designer, and advertising professional. Kureshi was a pioneering figure in India's street art movement, helping to transform urban spaces into public canvases and bringing art out of the museums to the wider public in India.

Kureshi's early childhood experiences with hand-painted signage led to his lifelong interest in typography and street art, with his first apprenticeship with local painters creating hand-painted license plates. He studied art at Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, later pursuing a career in advertising. He started working as a graffiti artist in the late 2000s, moving on to large-scale street art and murals, often collaborating with artists from around the world.

After seeing the impact of modern digital design and printing replacing the local artists of his youth, he started the HandpaintedType project as an attempt to preserve typographic practices and styles unique to Indian street sign painters and provide them with an income stream. Kureshi went on to co-found the St+art India Foundation to help popularise street art throughout the country, with notable work produced in the Lodhi Art District in Delhi, the Sassoon Dock art project in Mumbai, and the Bangalore Metro.

Early life Kureshi was born on 12 October 1982 in Palitana, a town in the Bhavnagar district of Gujarat. He first began working with street painters during his school vacations. He apprenticed with local painters who specialised in hand-painted licence plates. Encouraged by his father, he decided to become an artist himself,

Career Kureshi began his professional career in advertising, starting with the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather in 2003 where he went on to become a senior art director. He later moved to the advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy in 2008 where he became a senior creative. That same year, he first began working as a graffiti artist on the streets using the pseudonym Daku . as an attempt to preserve the typographic practices and styles of Indian street sign painters for future generations before they disappeared.

HandpaintedType documented the typefaces of at least 18 roadside painters in India, recording brief biographical data and producing at least two short documentary videos. Kureshi released an initial free, digitised street font to the public based on the project, followed by a later commercial release, whose proceeds were intended to provide a source of revenue for the traditional sign painters being displaced by digital printing. In 2011, Kureshi made several presentations to professional organisations about the data they collected, including one at the Typography Day conference in Ahmedabad followed by a larger, formal presentation at the 2011 ATypI typography conference in Reykjavík. along with Giulia Ambrogi, Thanish Thomas, Akshat Nauriyal, and investor Rajeev Bahl. One of the foundation's notable projects was the Lodhi Art District in Delhi, one of India's first open-air public art districts, which features over 60 murals created by national and international artists. The foundation went on to start seven art districts across the country; four are currently still active: Lodhi, Mahim in Mumbai, Nochi in Chennai, and Ukkadam in Coimbatore. He addressed topics like moral and cultural policing and urban issues involving garbage management.

He collaborated with Crew 156, their founding member JonOne, and other artists such as Bond and Zine. His earlier street work was considered more cynical and pseudonymous with him often using stealth to render graffiti and other street messaging, an approach that he moved away from in the latter part of his career. In an interview with the BBC as Daku, he stated that he respected Banksy's work but did not find comparisons "flattering" as he felt his work was "separate" and had "a very Indian aesthetic".

In some of his art, particularly his time series, Kureshi experiments with light and shadow. Due to the orientation of the wall, from 15 May to 15 August the wall appears completely blank.

Later exhibitions and death Kureshi's work was exhibited at international art events and venues, including the London Design Biennale, Venice Biennale, Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Triannale Design Museum in Milan. In India, his work appeared at the India Art, Architecture and Design Biennale at the Red Fort in Delhi. In June 2024, he held a solo exhibition at Wildstyle Gallery in Sweden; by that time, he had dealt with lung cancer for a year. He died with the disease in Goa on 22 September 2024 aged 41, Time Flies / Time Fades, Kochi (2012) Breathe (2015-2016) Lodhi Colony, New Delhi Time Changes Everything (2015-2016) Chakraview, London Design Biennale (2016) Sassoon Dock Art Project, Mumbai The Idea of Smell (2017) Lodhi Colony, New Delhi Panjim, Goa Theory of Time (2019) Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa Chennai Saurashtra (2020) India Art, Architecture and Design Biennale, Red Fort, Delhi Cycle of Time (2023)