The idea of placing a small, warm-blooded animal in a coal mine is credited to John Scott Haldane in the year 1895. He proposed using a caged canary to react to potentially dangerous build-ups of carbon monoxide. The canary’s sensitivity and high respiratory rate made it an ideal candidate to get sick first, early enough to warn miners to take evasive action, either by exiting the mine, or donning their protective respirators. The canary was the miner's best friend.

Hanif had no boundaries, no filters, no qualms – Ayaz Basrai

We even have an entire category of ‘sentinel species’ used for this specific purpose. We’ve fed cats mercury-laced fish in Japan and we’ve used dogs and even poultry to detect a wide range of environmental toxins. Although the mines are gone, the toxicity of our habitats remains. The mines are now replaced by all of urbanity. What we desperately need is a modern-day canary, a warm, humble and friendly presence, able to inhabit toxic environments and still be a harbinger of safety.

A rare breed

Hanif Kureshi was an artist who worked almost exclusively in the public domain. He had innumerable influences, from his work in the ad world to a deep understanding of what irked and moved culture. From his background in the arts, he cultivated a keen eye for refinement and subtlety. From his love of vernacular typography, a deep respect for India's plurality. Hanif had no boundaries, no filters, no qualms. At the end of a life like his, just the visual overload of his work begs to be demystified. Walking around the arts precincts he helped define, observing the deep passion in his typographic explorations and chuckling at the irreverence and incisive wit behind some of his public works begs a different kind of learning. We need to learn from his mind, not just from his eye and hand. When we see the world through Hanif’s eyes, a beautiful grammar emerges.

His deep focus on the beauty of the street, the democracy of the street and the profusion of eccentricity it produced informed his partnerships with Painter Kafeel, and also the adoption of his other artistic moniker Painter Kureshi. - Ayaz Basrai

Hanif thrived at creating networks. He left everyone he spoke to with a sense of duty, responsibility and deep ownership. His massive contribution was to open up the domain of public art, not just for himself, but for everyone. The only difference between street art and vandalism is intent and story-telling and Hanif brought this rigour to the scene. It has never been the same after him.

A number of aspiring artists were paired up with visiting legends for the St+art festivals to be able to facilitate a skill transfer. Visiting artists were requested to converse with locals, helped along by volunteer translators, to build personal connections with the murals now inhabiting local walls. St+art projects featured an unnaturally high percentage of murals celebrating the locals and this was Hanif's guiding hand at play while mentoring invited artists. Massive film-hero style cutout posters of local aunties in Goa, huge hands sculpting terracotta pots on parking structures and a celebrated collaboration with the Vayeda Brothers marrying Warli art and stencil-making. There is an inexplicably perfect bulls-eye of curation that was the signature Hanif touch. The networks he built are resilient, interwoven and strong. They are his greatest gift to the artist community. His work was not a fragile lotus flower on the surface of a tranquil lake; it was the unbreakable network below the surface that allowed the entire lotus pond to bloom.

By spotting toxicity early on, Hanif captured his audience’s attention. Hanging out with him in Bangalore when we were working on the Church Street Social together was a revelation. His STOP Gossiping, STOP Posing and STOP whatnot-ing stickers grabbed attention for their simplicity, clarity of intent and immaculate execution. In the urban environment, toxicity surrounds us. Some cities suffer from the scars of old communal tensions. Almost all cities are widely unequal and suffer from large-scale gentrification. Ignored precincts slowly decay. A huge shift from the shared commons to privatised and sanitised premium housing towers further speeds up inequality. AQIs that are off the scales, traffic and urban sprawls drive the construction of even more grey infrastructure. Crime and safety issues, dog residents and more Stop signs and a surveillance culture permeate the very fabric of our urban experience.

Not surprisingly, professionals seem more aligned with cementing this inequality, with architects and designers competing to design the next big celebrity home, the next big luxury villa and the next big vacation home. The hectic pace of urbanism, the polluted environment and mixed-up planning priorities have spawned a toxic city atmosphere. Hanif took on this toxicity in his own inimitable way, with his characteristic nonchalance, deep wit and clean execution. Stop, paste, move on. He drew our attention to it with a single word, strategically placed, ensuring that you couldn’t unsee or unthink it. The canary had done its job.

Hanif's love for the vernacular had a deep emergent grammar to it. His work on the street was deeply informed by his critique of the white box. Even while displaying within galleries, his work took on the high capitalism of the art market, featuring the use of demonetised currency and themes of greed and avarice. His deep focus on the beauty of the street, the democracy of the street and the profusion of eccentricity it produced informed his partnerships with Painter Kafeel and also the adoption of his other artistic moniker Painter Kureshi. Documenting hand-painted type became an exercise in connecting himself to the craft of street typography and also crediting the artists involved in more democratic ways, something that has been a completely alien thought to the fashion, architecture and design communities at large. Hanif’s work absorbed not just the visual language of the street, but also its ethos of serendipity, spontaneity and democratic access.

What do we do when we chance upon a large parcel of urban land with an uncertain future? This may be a parcel of land earmarked for a change in zoning. It may be a prime location of exponential speculative value. It may be an old neighbourhood waiting to be dismantled. It may well be contested land, with deep seated commercial interests. Hanif entered these contexts with a self-assured air, with the trust that something amazing lay beyond the endless tunnels of bureaucracy and policy documents.

Painted walls attract an all-pervasive gaze, slowly but surely tilting the balance of power. A new breed of urban walker enters a precinct that was inaccessible before, a closely-guarded heritage precinct, a sea-facing dock with a particular smell, a large tract of industrial warehouses ready to be repurposed. Where residents see walls as thresholds of privacy, artists see only canvases. The art on the walls allows each visitor to form a new connection with a new part of town, earmarking it for posterity. In Hanif’s reactivation of lost or off-limits precincts like the Sassoon Docks in Mumbai, or Lodhi Colony in Delhi, he re-imagined urbanity.

The canaries may even face stiff opposition. A hostile neighbourhood. A community insecure about land rights. A people living on contested land eyeing an uncertain future. Our sentinel species enter benignly, but their art creates new stakeholders, new connections and new value within the most marginalised neighbourhoods. The failings of architecture, the massive inhuman blank walls put up to screen our most marginalised residents in vertical slums from their high-value privatised tower-dwelling neighbours were the canvases Hanif painted on, celebrating locality and craft.

Can art speed up change, or help slow it down? Hanif's work and illuminary life leaves us with a hundred questions, a thousand open directions to continue his work. He questioned the responsibility of art, not merely looking at public art as cosmetic or decorative. If artists are more mindful of their role in the gentrification process, what about art must change to respond to this need of precincts? How can urban art serve a resident population beyond symbolism? Can art formalise a local populace? What kinds of urban installations would help secure land rights? Can art enable the creation of infrastructure that serves residents?

Hanif had a million fans; he touched thousands of lives, from his incredible work, to the friends who coalesced around him. His loss cut like a knife. Travel well, brother, and rest now. It’s a well earned sleep. Our studio will forever be indebted to him. See you on the other side, brother.