How artist A Rajeswara Rao chronicles a rapidly changing Hyderabad

At the opening of A. Rajeswara Rao’s solo exhibition, ‘Satirical Symphony’, at the Visual Arts Gallery in New Delhi recently, guests were greeted with red roses by young people dressed rather strangely. They wore gaudy clothes, though one should steer clear of judging people by their clothes. Most importantly, they wore garish and loud makeup, and rather large sunglasses — not ‘stunna shades’ but loud enough to catch everyone’s attention — inside a covered venue past sundown.

Those not aware of Rao’s oeuvre were a little taken aback and confounded when accepting the roses, and smiled sheepishly, the prank lost on them. But those familiar with Rao’s art had a hearty laugh to begin the evening. Those were characters from Rao’s acrylic works stepping out of the frame to take a walk amongst the art lovers. Watching all of this, the diminutive artist was beside himself with glee in some corner of the gallery.

“These are not fictional characters but everyday people that I have seen transformed into comic characters in my neighbourhood,” shares Rao over a chat later. “As IT money started pouring into Hyderabad, and trickling into cities, towns and villages yonder, people transformed almost overnight. Suddenly, they started dressing up and showing off their wealth in flashy ways,” says Rao with a laugh that is evidence of how much he enjoys observing people around him.

So much so, that this subject has become his leitmotif since he first started painting it several years ago, and is the theme of his ongoing show in New Delhi, presented by Dhoomimal Gallery and Art Magnum.

The people’s painter

Rao’s passion to observe society goes long back in time and people have always been his muses, as he puts it. But it was only when he moved to Hyderabad from his native Vizianagaram (also known as Vijayanagaram) in 1988 that the rapid transformations taking place in then Andhra Pradesh found their way into Rao’s art. “Two events that markedly brought a change in my art practice are, first, my shift from Vizianagaram, a small, culturally evolved town, to Hyderabad into a totally different milieu in 1988 and second, after a few years, my shift from the bustling city centre of Hyderabad to a small forlorn village on its outskirts called Hyderguda,” he explains.

Rao, who completed his BFA from Andhra University in 1983 and MFA from Hyderabad Central University in 1990, couldn’t help but notice the sudden transformation taking place all around him in that landmark decade in the life of Andhra Pradesh (which has since been carved into two states, one of which is Telangana).

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Hyderabad and Big Tech

Rao came of age as an artist at a seminal time in the life of then Andhra Pradesh, in particular and India, in general. It was in 1986 that the first IT tower came up in Hyderabad and soon, under N Chandrababu Naidu as the chief minister of the state (he is now the chief minister of Telangana), Hyderabad metamorphosed from a large, laidback city of the Nizams and biryani to the co-IT capital of India in no time. Among other historical steps that Naidu took, he persuaded Bill Gates to set up a Microsoft development centre in Hyderabad, which, at that time, became the software giant’s only development centre outside the US. Soon, the Big Tech companies started opening shop in Hyderabad, which today is the second biggest IT exporter from India, only after Bengaluru. As per official figures, in FY 2022-23, Telangana’s share in the country’s new IT jobs was a staggering 44%, a chunk of which is concentrated in its capital city of Hyderabad.

“When I shifted my studio to Hyderguda (then on the outskirts of Hyderabad and now one of the top realty destinations in the city), one couldn’t help but notice the relative poverty, and the agricultural land and related occupations of the people. The landscape was marked by small, tiled-roof houses, small schools, a tiny post office… Soon, all that changed. People started selling land and making money, and the landscape changed dramatically. While that was expected, what caught my eye was the concomitant change in the way people lived and behaved. Very surprisingly, they were making loud efforts to display their new-found wealth. Pink lips and leggings, diamonds and holidays abroad, among other things, became part of their lives,” he shares.

His interest in the lives of the erstwhile simple people around him was boosted by the tales of the house help who appeared daily with some fantastic story from the neighbourhood, all alluding to the massive change that the community was undergoing. And it was not just material transformation but also sartorial, attitudinal and even aspirational.

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Loud and common

“With the realty boom that engulfed the region, people had financial freedom to not just negotiate hitherto untried waters but even go to crazy lengths to do so. At some point, I decided to go to bars to check out people’s new-found habits, and it was quite a revelation,” he shares with a chuckle.

The most striking thing about Rao’s acrylic paintings is that he has succeeded in transferring the loudness of the common life around him with pithy accuracy to his canvases. To begin with, all the characters in his portrayal of the nouveau-riche of Hyderabad and surroundings, wear dark shades that instantly add to their appeal while also betraying the aspirational lives they lead.

It’s not a surprise, then, that some titles of Rao’s works are quite cheeky, kick-ass, and totally Bollywood. A painting showing a bride arriving at her wedding riding a horse is titled Bhago Basanthi, all of whose elements allude to the over-the-top celebrity weddings and their blatant emulation across small-town India. Another shows a gaudily dressed lady with red lips and royal attire flaunting her new dark shades, standing in the foreground of the rusty old cityscape. It’s titled My New Ray Ban. Yet another, Mein Asli Mumtaz Hoon, evokes Mumtaz Mahal of the Taj Mahal, depicting a new modern woman laden with baubles reflecting her recent wealth, which almost brings her at part with the Mughal queen of yore. Hawa Ke Saath Saath, on the other hand, takes a dig at the globetrotting bug that caught India with the increase in disposable income post-liberalisation, and post-‘IT-fication’ of middle-class India.

The cheekiness of the paintings is accentuated by their titles, often playing on names of soaps or titles of songs from popular culture, which appears to be a well-thought-out move, as it helps to segue the democratisation of celebrity culture by way of wealth, and social media to flaunt it, into the changing mores around Hyderabad.

Rao’s technique of making art deserves a special mention too as he follows reverse painting on acrylic sheet with acrylic medium. “It is inspired by the Tanjore Glass painting, only that I carry it out on transparent acrylic sheet. The special look that you see is achieved by scratching the paint after application, whose luminosity is accentuated by putting a sheet of paper at the back,” he informs. He learnt the technique under the guidance of his father, A Paidi Raju, renowned artist and founder of Fine Arts College at Waltair University (now Andhra University), Visakhapatnam.

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Pure joy, no mocking

While creating these paintings has given immense joy to the artist, which he also successfully conveys to the beholders of his work with great wit, he makes it clear that he is not making fun of people but only sharing his observances with humour and satire. That makes him a vital chronicler of the metamorphosis of Hyderabad, one of the biggest stories of post-liberalisation India along with Bengaluru, that has changed the fortunes of not just these two cities but of the entire educated, middle-class India.

That makes Rao a league of his own as contemporary Indian painting has mostly overlooked the monumental transformations by way of city culture, focussing instead more on socio-political situations.

‘Satirical Symphony’, which was shown at Hyderabad before being in New Delhi, is curated by Annapurna M. and Kiran K. Mohan. It is on view until October 20 at Art Magnum at Yusuf Sarai, Sri Aurobindo Marg, New Delhi