Mumbai street artist Tyler on his stencil becoming a protest symbol at Jantar Mantar

Street artist Tyler’s iconic poster is being used as a protest symbol during the ongoing protests across India

| Photo Credit: Tyler Street Art

Unless you have been living under a rock in India, it is likely that you might have encountered a barrage of memes, posters, and art created by Gen Z protesters, showcasing their dissent against the NEET examination paper leak. Although spearheaded by the Cockroach Janata Party, protestors from across the country have been turning to art to find a medium to express their discontentment with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi.Popular among them is a stencil of Modi flanked by industrialists Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani. The two can be seen kissing the PM. Behind this poster is Tyler Street Art, often known as Mumbai’s Banksy, who uses graffiti as the intended medium, to make art that matters to the public today.“Street art has always been more than decoration. It gives ordinary people a visual language to question authority, challenge dominant narratives and reclaim public space,” they say in an anonymous interview. Tyler, an anonymous street artist has been making street art since 2012, using public space as a canvas to start conversations. Some of their earliest works sounding the alarm bells of a broken democracy can be traced back to 2019. Tyler prefers to keep their identity separate from their work because they would like for the idea to speak for itself.