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Meet the artist who’s turning 100 stories from Tinder into art
Artist Indu Harikumar is turning the experiences of Indians on Tinder — good, bad and ugly — into clever illustrations
Forget the Tinder ad. Discover artist Indu Harikumar’s work instead. She’s turning the experiences of Indians on Tinder — good, bad and ugly — into clever illustrations
You swipe right. You exchange numbers. You go on a date to that new bar everyone’s been talking about. What happens on this date can either lead you to your soul mate (statistically, chances are slim, but who knows), or turn into one of the many attempts at finding true love in the time of Tinder. But these moments — sometimes funny, sometimes moving — inspired Mumbai-based artist Indu Harikumar (36) to start the online art project #100IndianTinderTales.
And it’s definitely more layered, and clever than Tinder’s widely panned ad.
Harikumar started the project with four stories, from her own experience of using Tinder when in Europe, and a few others sourced from her friends. “I didn’t think I’d be able to churn out enough stories, so I reinstalled Tinder on my phone,” she says. She’d earlier uninstalled the app within 24 hours of using it after being bothered by men, most of them “outright creepy”, she says.
With more than 20 illustrations already up on her Facebook and Instagram page, Harikumar is now confident of sustaining the project till she reaches 100. “This time I decided to stay and not be offended. I’d like to talk to folks, engage and be open about who I am and why I am on Tinder; also date and have some fun,” she adds.
For the art of love
The illustrations are often striking, with a central theme grabbing your attention. For instance, when the artist wrote about meeting a Polish-Indian traveller in Andheri (E), she captured the chaos that is generally associated with the suburb through depictions of traffic jams and high-rises stacked up in a row. Then, for the story about a user looking for a hairstylist through Tinder, the artist chose to keep it simple with just a pair of scissors running through untamed hair.
“This project is different from anything I’ve done before. I wanted to try something devoid of [too much] colours, keep it easy on the eye,” says Harikumar. In the past, she has illustrated children’s books, as well as a colouring book for grown-ups called Beauty Needs Space. She draws a lot of inspiration from artists like René Magritte, Gustav Klimt and Mario Miranda. “I want to draw Edward Munch’s Scream in an Indian setting soon,” she says.
Finding love
Though the illustrations deal with hush-hush topics like sex and sexuality, Harikumar keeps them non-offensive with her witty interpretations. While most of them are light-hearted, there are some tearjerkers too. “A girl shared a story about a person she matched on Tinder but never met. They grew close over five months. And one day she stopped hearing from him. After four days, she called his office to find out that he’d died in an accident,” recalls Harikumar. This was also the story she struggled to illustrate the most.
Harikumar, who is on Tinder (at least till she manages to reach 100 illustrations), now is often asked by her dates if the dating app is sponsoring her, or if she’s here “for research”. “I am only looking to document urban desire, romance, drama, vileness, misogyny, and perversion, that such a medium is open to. But the best part of this project has been hearing from various women. Women who feel vulnerable about putting themselves out there looking for love, sex, connections,” she says.
A tale of love and loss between a Mumbai girl and a Delhi boy who never met but only spoke for five months. Before they were to meet, he passed away in an accident.
Harikumar’s Tinder experience in Vienna with a date, who introduced her to local art, while keeping a 10-inch distance, worried of “corrupting Indian culture”.
Share the love
If you wish to submit your experience or follow the project, visit facebook.com/Induviduality or instagram.com/Induviduality
