Fearless Collective: Spreading Street Art and Love in Karachi and Lahore

Bengaluru-based multimedia artist, Shilo Shiv Suleman and her art are almost everywhere, be it the Burning Man festival or NH7 Weekender. Her art has spread through books on the streets of India and Nepal and now to, Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi. What started out as a way of talking about gender equality and rights post the Nirbhaya incident in India, has now become a phenomenon.

Fearless Collective is a three-year-old project that partners with NGOs and holds workshops with local people and communities. They try to understand the issues that people face, and make murals in a very collaborative way.

Having already done around 15 projects all over India {Dharavi, Chennai, Bangalore and Delhi}, in Lahore they are working on a project that subverts age-old prejudices. For instance, one of their artworks says, ‘log kya kaheinge, hum bhi log hain, hum kya kaheinge.’

From Shilo’s Vogue interview, we get a very succinct feel of what the whole project is about, when she says, “When I decided to go to Pakistan, I was told ‘don’t go, it’s unsafe.’ Once there, we decided to go to Karachi. Everyone said, ‘don’t go, it’s unsafe.’ Within Karachi, we zeroed in on Lyari. Everyone said ‘it’s too dangerous, don’t go.’ But I discovered, every single time we crossed a boundary of fear, that we found love on the other side.”

Read the full interview with Vogue here. 

Check out their Page here.