The makers of Prabhas’s Saaho have been accused of plagiarism again, this time by a Bengaluru-based artist after the ‘Baby won’t you tell me’ song was released on August 26. Artist Shilo Shiv Suleman called out the makers in an Instagram post, accusing them of copying her artwork from her 2017 installations at the Burning Man Art festival.
The song featuring Prabhas and Shraddha Kapoor has the duo pictured against a surreal location surrounded by huge metallic flowers, in what seems to be an exact copy of Shilo's work from 2017. The allegedly plagiarised work was also noticed by popular Intagrammer Diet Sabya who sarcastically pointed out how the makers of Saaho, which was set to break the records of Avengers: Endgame, didn’t have enough budget to make an original artwork for the movie.
Shilo, a contemporary artist, engaging with Biofeed Technology, is known for her art installations that interact between the body and art.
Taking to her Instagram handle on Friday, the artist in her post asserted that the artwork was lifted without her permission and explained how the installation, called Pulse and Bloom, had come into existence during the Burning Man Art Festival.
“Pulse and bloom is a biofeedback installation that reacts to people’s heartbeats, and it came to exist because of a series of personal relationships. It was born from love (like me). We had support from @burningman but we also pulled out of our own pockets to make it manifest. I left my home for the first time, moved to another country, went out into that desert. It cost me a heart. It was a gift, and a sacrifice for all of us involved, and changed the paths of all our lifelines,” the artist wrote on her Instagram page.
“Where does inspiration come from?” Shilo asks in her post, adding, “What (sacred) wells do we drink from when we create from an original and authentic space?.... I’m quite certain it was intended for me to create this installation. I’m certain that the sand storms, the dust, the rose-pink clouds, the thunderstorms gathered around it intentionally, for me.”
This isn’t the first time that the makers of Saaho have been accused of plagiarising art works for its movie posters. The first poster which had Prabhas walking amidst smog, with a scarf covering his face, was found to be similar to the poster of the 2017 film Blade Runner with Ryan Gosling in a similar get-up.
Another poster which had Prabhas and Shraddha Kapoor shooting down enemies from across a wall is said to be copied from the poster of an online video game, Rainbow Six Siege.
Saaho hit the theatres on August 30 and opened to mostly negative reviews from critics. Made on a staggering budget of Rs 350 crore, the film had upped expectations among people after Prabhas’s Baahubali films enjoyed a phenomenal run. Directed by Sujeeth, the film also has Shraddha Kapoor playing the female lead.