Who Are The Wicked Broz?
A history of the evolution of Wicked Broz
Wicked Broz inject art into everything.
We at Wicked Broz work on art campaigns for brands, do wall art for interiors and run India’s leading street art community.
The idea is that art preserves and shapes culture and the artist is the culture warrior. So if we inject art into enough places and can bring together enough artists to do that, then maybe the world could become a better place?
Anyone who works on our projects or interacts with our art becomes a wicked bro. However, for practical purposes, the management of our brand and our community falls into the hands of two people who have been there since the beginning, Omkar Dhareshwar and Zain Siddiqui. Together, with the team of artists featuring Dheeraj Singh and Prasenjit Bordoloi they are changing the world, one wall at a time.
Nothing is a
Waste Of Time
-
Sitting in hostel rooms in Sinhgad Institute of Technology, Lonavla (Yes, we are engineers), Omkar Dhareshwar and Chahat Zaveri decided to stop wasting time studying what they were not interested in and spending time exploring things that made them happy. That’s when they came up with the idea to start selling merchandized T-shirts and home décor products to fellow students. One thing led to another and before they knew it, Wicked Broz was born.
-
Soon Zain Siddiqui and Prithviraj Mallick were roped in for creating in house art and selling it and in Jan 2014 we showcased our products to the public at a stall in Pune. We were getting good at making and selling them DevD portraits on empty beer bottles and Heath Ledger’s legendary Joker character on Canvas through stalls at flea markets. We gifted a Taxi Driver portait to RajKumar Rao at the sets of the movie Trapped where Omkar worked in the production team. Those were crazy days.
-
Other artists started getting in touch with us so that we could showcase their products too. For a while, we even tried experimenting with our own boxer shorts which frankly were a huge hit in the small quantity we made them. However, it wasn’t until Omkar met Zake that we finally found our calling with graffiti.
Graffiti Diaries
Zake had been in the graffiti scene for a few years and was trying to figure his own way forward. He gave us a first-hand tour of what it feels like to stand in the middle of the night and bomb the streets. That friendship would change our lives.
Over the next few years we started accompanying Zake and our crew of graffiti writers like Mooz and NME all across Mumbai for bombing and commercial jobs. Wicked Broz evolved from a merchandising brand selling stuff at flea market stalls to India’s first graffiti agency.
Zain and Omkar would manage the clients and help out in operations and the boys would do their magic with spray cans on the walls. Puma, NBA, GE, Absolut, NH7, Techfest and Street of Styles in Brazil, we were everywhere.
Shaitani Bina Bachpan Bekar Hai, Nahi?
What became evident during these years however, was that graffiti is only a smaller sub section of this larger public arts movement called street art that is sweeping across our country. People want workshops on how they too can paint. Art expression on large walls in small art districts will inspire locals to join the army.
For our mission of creating a dialogue between parents and children, people and artists on what is art, what is a waste of time and what is not, Wicked Broz needs to evolve from being just a graffiti agency to something larger. We need to be an entity that binds communities.
We need art companies in India who take more active participation in the cultural revolution in the society than just selling art. Zain and Omkar have already got some partners on board and are actively looking for more responsible people to join hands on this adventure.
All this change in such a short period of time seems a bit overwhelming at times. But it is inevitable. Everyday we learn something new on the streets. We need to be taken and end up reshaping our vision. We are children forever. Let’s not let the mischief die.
The Wicked Broz Team
These are the faces of the mischief makers that are primarily responsible for talking to potential project partners, visualizing spaces and then going to wrecking havoc on the walls and in public spaces. Say Hello ya’ll!
Zain Siddiqui
Chief Storyteller
Zain adds the branding and social media strokes at Wicked Broz. He loves to come up with new concepts for our in house street art projects and spreads the stories of our community far and wide.
Omkar Dhareshwar
Mr Wicked Broz
From day 1, he is the man driving the movement. From carrying spray cans for graffiti artists to arranging walls to talking to project partners to managing accounts, there is nothing he cannot do. A poet, a musician, a slackliner and now a juggler of balls and communities – he truly imbibes the saying – Nothing is a waste of time.
Prasenjit Bordoloi
Doodle Raja
Prasen is from Assam. He has been tripping on nature for a long long time. No wonder then that his doodles are a trip into the human psychie and heavily inspired by the nature around us.
He has been painting for the last 10 years and has experience with lots of brands including the Delhi Metro project.
He loves playiig the guitar when he is not painting and shares a love for the mountains just like the rest of us.
Krypt One
Graff King
Football fan, music freak, graffiti artist. Krypt.One is a simple person who chills like a wicked bro and paints like a beast.
Ever since we met him as a volunteer at our Ladies First Street Art Festival in 2019, he has been involved in a number of major projects for us.
He is still figuring out his own unique style. Playing with fonts, jamming with other graffiti artists, working on canvas pieces,
creating NFTs and someday hopes to emulate his idols Kim Jung, Can2 and Kiptoe.