28/02/2020
Icons of Goa, murals by
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London-born Jerusalem-based noted graffiti writer and street artist Solomon Souza was in Goa for the Serendipity Arts Festival. He has a deeper connection with Goa, it is ‘home’ — Solomon’s grandfather, Francis Newton Souza, the seminal modernist painter and founder of the Progressive Artists Movement of the 1940s, hailed from here. His project, Icon, under curator Vivek Menezes’ Mundo Goa project, was part of the 2019
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1) Brahmanand Sankhwalkar's mural on a wall on the Taleigao-Caranzalem road, was one of the finest goalkeepers of his time.
2) Mural of the first Goan cricketer to play for India, the great Dilip Sardesai, on a wall just beside Pharmacy college in Panjim.
3) Mary D’Souza, India’s first double international, who starred for the country on both track and hockey pitch, on a wall in the Panjim Market. Walk from Geeta Bakery to the market to notice it. All through the 1950s, she held the Asian records for 100- and 200-meter sprints, winning gold, silver, bronze at the Asian Games in 1951 and 1954.
4) On a wall next to Don Bosco College in Panaji, ace sprinter Seraphino Antao who won double gold for Kenya at the 1962 Commonwealth Games. The Goan-origin Kenyan is also referred to as the Cheetah and is the fastest runner from India or Kenya.
5) A work in progress. Solomon was sketching as she was discussing her works at Vista du Mundo at the festival. It's only much later that I realised that it was Solomon Souza at work. @ Panjim, Goa, India
