While citizens and the Opposition in Bengaluru criticised the Karnataka government and the civic body for the city’s pothole-infested roads, an artist took matters into his own hands on Friday. Baadal Nanjundaswamy turned a pothole into a water body, and had Kannada actor Sonu Gowda emerge out of it like a mermaid.

Although it may seem more aesthetically appealing than disintegrating tar and cement, Twitter had a lot to say about it. Some lauded the artist for trying to bring the matter further into the spotlight, other criticised it saying it would worsen the congestion in the already crowded Cubbon Park area.

This is not the first time Nanjundaswamy has turned a pothole into a work of art. In 2015, the Bengaluru artist became famous for an installation, where he made a crocodile dummy emerge from a waterlogged pothole, and another where he dotted a sewage-filled crater with artificial lotuses.

Baadal Nanjundaswamy paints and places a life-size model of a crocodile into a huge water-logged pothole in Bengaluru Sultanpalya traffic junction on June 18, 2015. (Credit: Manjunath Kiran/AFP)
Baadal Nanjundaswamy pours paint around his art installation after placing artificial lotus flowers over a pothole filled with sewage at a pedestrian junction on Old Airport Road in Bengaluru on August 20, 2015. (Credit: Manjunath Kiran/AFP)

On Tuesday, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had given the civic body of Bengaluru a fortnight to fill up and fix 15,000 potholes across the city. The order came after four people died in accidents caused by bad roads over the past two weeks.