Wall Art India 2026: Khatra brings urban landscape to life on a wall in Hyderabad

‘Khatra’ means danger, but for graffiti artist Khatra aka Siddharth Gohli, it’s a sign of edge rather than danger. The name reflects her artistic flair: daring, disruptive, and hard to ignore.

Currently in Hyderabad for the Wall Art India initiative, he is bringing a piece of urban energy to a wall at the Alliance Française Hyderabad. This journey is also a homecoming in a way. He is eager to return to the Makatha Art District, where he painted in 2016. “I was part of the St+Art Foundation then,” he recalls. “I made a painting of a one-toothed old man holding a single-bristle toothbrush.”

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Mural Art by Artist Khatra | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Typography comes alive in Khatra’s hands. He twists letter forms into graffiti, abstraction and the raw textures of the street, blurring the line between text and image.

A fine arts graduate from Vadodara, he first encountered large-scale street art at the inaugural St+Art Festival in Delhi in 2015, then as a design student. The support of international artists left a mark. “It was the first time I saw this form up close,” he says. “When I went back to Vadodara, I started making my own murals.” He later joined St+Art Foundation as a graphic designer and now collaborates with them on a project basis.

His practice sits at the intersection of design and art, allowing him to transform his grounding in typography into abstract creations. When he collaborates with a close friend, who is also a street artist, the work moves from abstraction to more figurative graffiti.

Artist Threat inspired by the urban landscape Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

The threat starts with a digital sketch before it’s up on the wall. The jump from screen to surface can be tricky – proportions change and detail expands – but he relies on the grid to map out the structure. “It seems complicated in the beginning, but once the grid is established, it becomes manageable,” he says. Sometimes, he projects the outlines directly onto the wall before painting.

He believes that street art in India has evolved rapidly in the last decade. “Earlier, the walls were just visual noise, filled with political posters and advertisements. Now you see huge murals in central Delhi. Festivals have opened doors for Indian and international artists to reshape the urban landscape.”

For Danger, creating murals is a long-term task. “There’s something powerful about painting your ideas on a big wall and interacting with the community. It’s helped me form my own style.”

The name ‘Khatra’ comes from the College of Design in Vadodara, where he would often write the danger sign with a skull and crossbones. When he combined this with sharp, sarcastic messages, classmates began calling him a threat. “I kept it,” he says. “it felt Native And better.”