New Delhi, March 22 -- Daku's last work is up on a wall in Delhi 18 months after the internationally-renowned graffiti artist passed away aged 41 years owing to complications arising from lung cancer. Hanif Kureshi, also known as the graffiti artist Daku, designed the mural shortly before he passed away. The work, up on a wall on one of the buildings in the Lodhi Art District and visible to all commuters and residents alike, came up last month as part of the Lodhi Art fair organised by St+Art, a not for profit arts organisation that Kureshi helped co-found in 2013. Kureshi operated for years with an almost Banksy-like anonymity. In the span of his worklife, he was a cornerstone of India's street art movement, and through St+Art, helped turn public spaces into sites where people could take a moment to ponder over an artwork, as visitors of galleries do. Titled "Water: Past, Present, Future" the mural is a collaboration between Kureshi and UK-based visual artist Raissa Pardini.. "What value does water have for you? / How do you reuse water?" asks the mural, in bold, shadowed typography - in Hindi and English - amid painted depictions of stepwells and earthen water pots. The words "Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow" are painted on the top. "For Hanif, water was not only a theme to be illustrated, but something intrinsically tied to how Indian cities function or fail. For this mural, time became the structural device. Framed through Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, the work situates water within a continuum rather than a crisis. He wanted viewers to locate themselves within that arc, to reflect on what has been inherited and what will be passed forward," said Giulia Ambrogi, chief curator and one of the other four co-founders of St+Art India. "He understood that crises are rarely sudden. They accumulate. He was suggesting that environmental degradation is not isolated to the present. It is shaped by past neglect and will define future realities. The work becomes less about conservation as a buzzword and more about continuity and memory. About recognising that we are participants in a longer story, and about asking what we have chosen to forget," Ambrogi added. The work is one of six new ones added to the Lodhi Art District for the tenth edition of the Lodhi Art Fair. The other five were made by artists from different countries, including artist JuMu from Germany, Polish artist Pener, and Argentinian artist Elian Chali. Two murals resulted from collaborations between multiple artists: one by Indian artist duo Svabhu Kohli and Ram Sangchoju, and another by Tarini Seth and Ishaan Bharat from India working with Spain's Suso33. "The word I would use to describe him in context to street art is pioneer. This was not only because he created the foundation and was one of the first to bridge international and Indian street art, but also because he had a vision for India," said Joe Cyril, founder and director of Kochi and Mumbai based galleries, Muzeris Contemporary. In 2011, Kureshi started HandPaintedType, a project that documented the typefaces of roadside painters in India and aimed to bring street sign painting to the forefront of Indian art. Social messaging was central to his work. Many Delhi residents would remember the middle finger with an inked nail - depicting voting in the elections-that appeared in Connaught Place's F-Block shortly before the 2014 Indian general elections, with the words "Mat Do" written next to it in Hindi. The message can be translated as both "Don't give," referring to not voting in the elections, and "Give vote." This was one of Hanif's creations under his alias Daku. Kureshi worked without the alias as well, and has two other murals in the Lodhi Art District which are under his name - "This must be the place" made by him and Australian artist Georgia hill, and "We Love Dilli", made through a collaboration with Parisian graffiti artist Lek and Franco-American artist Sowat. "The street itself isn't neutral. The moment you put something on a public wall, you're entering a conversation about control and access. Graffiti makes a claim. It questions who controls public space. That's political, even if the work isn't slogan-driven," says Tyler, a Mumbai-based street artist who collaborated with Kureshi. A board attached to the building claims that the two artists designed it through exchanges with local sign painters in Old Delhi, merging digital typography with hand-painted designs....