Remember when you were in school and had a designated arts class where they’d hand you popsicle sticks or random scraps of paper and a glue stick, and simply ask you to make something? It would inevitably turn out to be fifty shades of ugly, but your teachers would call it art and your parents would proudly stick it on the fridge. At that age, art meant being seen for your potential. Somewhere along the way, though, art became a fancy word, used to describe things created by a small subsect of people with the access and resources to make whatever they want, however they want it.
But historically, art, at least the best kind, has been made for, and often by, people on the peripheries of society.
The Lost Kids Garage (LKG), an artist collective based in Kerala, is trying to bring back this childlike joy through interactive installations. Focusing on public spaces, the collective began with its founder, Shanto Antony, a painter by training, who moved away from studio-based work to bring art out of closed rooms and into everyday life.
Free from the burden of institutional structures or creative pressure, Lost Kids Garage works across multiple media, murals, sculptures, and spatial design, creating art that invites participation rather than reverence. The garage is not a polished studio or a white-walled gallery — it is an in-between space that is constantly evolving. By working in streets, open grounds, LKG treats public space like a garage: a place where ideas are tested.
This approach positions public art as something alive and responsive, shaped by the people who encounter it and the environments it inhabits. The garage, as both metaphor and method, allows art to exist outside rigid frameworks, reminding us that creativity often thrives in informal, collective spaces where process matters as much as outcome.
Lost Kids Garage actively dismantles the intimidation that often surrounds art. There is no entry fee, no prescribed way to look, and no expectation of prior knowledge. Using discarded materials and found objects further strips art of its exclusivity. People are invited to touch, question, participate, and even misunderstand, without the fear of “doing it wrong”.
This openness shifts the relationship between art and its audience, transforming viewers into collaborators rather than passive observers. In removing the layers of pretence that typically mediate art encounters, LKG creates space for genuine engagement, where art feels less like something to be decoded and more like something to be experienced.
At its core, Lost Kids Garage is a reminder of what art once was, and what it still has the potential to be. By reclaiming public spaces as sites of making, LKG returns art to the people it has slowly drifted away from, asking us not to be experts or critics, but participants. In doing so, they gesture towards a future where art is less about permission and polish, and more about access, process, and the simple, radical act of making together.
Follow them here to know more.
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