FREEWHEELING with Freedom Tree
“The minute art comes into the public realm you have to consider the collective first”
We continue our chat with Priyanka Thaker, the force behind House of Berserk, on the ever-changing responsibility of art in a public realm
@HouseofBerserk
April 2025
How do words inform the concept
W“If you ask me five favourite authors of mine, I would not be able to name any. I'm a voracious consumer of the written word, but facts fail me when I need them the most! All that I have consumed stays in the subconscious and it just finds its way out in a very hotchpotch manner. But it does come from wherever, from whenever!”
“So we think that people know what they want. Six years now in the practice, I've realized that most of the time, they have an idea as to what they want, but it's sort of our job as designers to finally put a finger to what they NEED. So, this is why the ideation process for us is the most important process.”
“What we do is we first let a client approach us with that idea and intent, and then we send a questionnaire. You immediately get an insight of the family dynamics based on who's writing back on the questionnaire. The minute one person fills and sends it back, you know A: whose idea was this, and B: who's paying. These are the subtle ways in which we start moving into understanding the family.”“That's how we then build the narrative, and also create a balance between what you want and what you need. I am different from an ‘artist artist,’ per se, also because I'm a service provider. There's also certain grace that comes from being an artist, but you also have to draw that boundary as a professional.”
Facing cookie cutter moments
W“There's always that person who will ask you to reproduce something else. There are going to be people of all sorts that come to you. They will come to you saying ‘Mujhe wahi chaiye‘. They will also come to you saying, ‘isse aur accha banana.’ Which is very weird that you come to a person this is what you say. How do you decide that? Sometimes they want, ‘sassy work’, or another adjective to be added to what already has been done.”
“It's all a game of narrative. Most times in life, it's not about what is being said, it’s how it is being said. That makes and breaks the person and anything and everything in life. So, you've said something enough, but now you've said it in a way that I know what you mean.”
The inspiration behind design, illustration, & technique
W“I find it in everything that life is an inspiration. On introspection, I've always felt that if you start putting those dots and maps together, my life has always been a life full of awareness. I was an aware child, more than a curious child. Curiosity has a lot to do with questioning; why are there stars? Awareness, comes first with acceptance that, ‘okay, there are stars’. The most obvious thing is something that you tend to discard.”
“Awareness is always acceptance first, and then then moving inwards, forwards, front end, or whatever. Awareness also led to me being sensitive, which then led to a lot of empathy. That sort of became my process which I did not realize: Feeling becomes the crux of anything and everything.”
A little bit on process
WWe look to create what is relatable content for my clients. If I do something that is purely abstract, versus something which is narrative, but rooted in tradition - I think you can enjoy that a lot more. This becomes a starting point for a broader look and feel of what I'm trying to create.”
“I am going to come back to poetics of it. I wake up in the morning with a jump in my feet. Even that also sort of dictates how the art is going to be. When we're talking to our clients when the first proposal goes, it clearly mentions that it's going to be sent to you as a line drawing first, because colors are intuitive. They can bind us into a broader color palette, ‘only work with blues and greens’, but in that moment, I can never tell you what blue, what shade, what saturation, what intensity. I cannot give it to you.”
“There has to be trust. Because before you commission me, there is nothing that you have. Only what you've seen as my previous is body of work. For me it's the day that I'm waking up, and what I'm waking up with. The energy just keeps changing throughout. It's very selfish and very self-oriented like that because it can change. I have slept with something, but I am going to wake up with something else completely fresh.”
Art in the public realm is for real people
WWhat I've also realized about myself and the ever-changing responsibility of art in a public realm is that it doesn't matter what you want. It is important for the collective, what is the need of the hour then. It does need to track where you coming from, where you at right now, and where you are headed in another 10 years.”
“It doesn't matter who the client is. It doesn't matter who I am or where I'm at in life. The minute it comes into a public realm, you have to consider the collective first. The collective, is your client first. Then it is who's designing and then, it is who's paying. They [the collective] are the clients, the multitude who we don't know. We don't know the age, colour, all of that. We just don't know. They, the community are the final clients.”
“So even with respect to this hospital building project. We have done an eight-story facade building, which is an architectural, and flora fauna culmination of Ahmedabad and the land around it. The subject is not what I would normally choose, [why draw a building on a building] but I've still done it. Because Ahmedabad is a heritage city. FCG, the hospital chain, is basically a Bangalore-based brand. This hospital in Ahmedabad is the biggest cancer hospital in the city.”
“I could have done the most iconic work, and we we could have convinced the client that this is what we should do. It was not about that. It absolutely wasn't about that. The clients came with the intent that we want to do something for the hospital. It started from there. And then the patients that they're essentially going to serve.”
A dialogue between the artwork and the city
“There are a lot of stakeholders. The collective, the building, the user, it's again, a hospital building at the end of the day and not a normal OPD. It's a cancer hospital at the end of the day. So we have to be considering all of those elements together. But it's also an eight story façade, which Ahmedabad is going to consume day in, day out.”
“The way people are coming into the hospital, nobody is interested in the facade or how beautiful your building looks. Clean is all they care about, how swiftly and quickly are going to attend to the emergency, that's all they care about.”
“So the concept is to sensitize those in power and positions of control that sometimes forget their people. So you have to subtly facilitate that. And I think, again, coming back to your architecture question, maybe I have been trained to understand context. Maybe if urban planning had been more than a semester for us, I would have actually cared about that.”
“We also have to map the roads and the views. What part of the day is this mural going to be seen the most? Is there a signal? Are people going to stop by it? So the psychological impact of that large scale mural was way above and beyond me as a person or as an artist or as a storyteller. I'm a very small part, I was just the medium in facilitating a richer dialogue between that artwork and the city.”
The love is mutual
“I wanted to share one thing about when I moved to my Bangalore house and when we were setting it up. I’ve lived by myself since I was 17 and I've accumulated anything and everything. But with each studio comes a renewed sense of purpose and energy and all of that. I went to Freedom Tree also a week later as I was hosting. Found a couple of things that I selected and wanted more and more.”
“Something happened where they thought that they had it in the warehouse and was not there or they won't be able to deliver or something like that. I just couldn't turn the whole setting around because I had a vision! I very honestly over the phone told the person that was in the store, ‘This is how I've conceived the space. These are the things that I want. I don’t want anything else.’”
“They made it happen in two days. Despite the seven days or ten days or whatever the timeline was normally, they made the look happen for me in two days. Now I know after meeting more of the team, why that happened in two days. For me, it’s about setting up the values early on. So, when I said that I'm a customer, I’m always going to be a customer because of how I was treated.”
