Summer’s orchestra of sounds are joined at some juncture by the song of the cicada, and usually that means we are at the very height of this warm and sticky season, just before slowly returning to a cooler one. Street artists Barlo and Gods in Love just painted this in Italy, where the cicadas were molting, thus the name of the piece “Muta”.
Barlo X Gods In Love “MUTA” Italy. July 2016. (photo © Barlo)
“Few sounds are more evocative of summer than the pulsating drone of cicadas on a sultry afternoon. Just one of these bulky, beady-eyed insects makes a lot of noise. A treetop chorus of hundreds of males can seem deafening,” says writer and retired biologist Vicky McMillan.
Adults for only a few weeks, their songs are (surprise!) about mating, so when you hear that high-pitched raspy singing in July or August in the countryside and even in parts of some cities, you know that love is in the air. After mating, the females cut a thin slit into the branch of a tree and lay their eggs inside, where they can stay for years before hatching.
It’s a timely story of shedding and rebirth, interpreted with wide latitude in the middle of the Italian summer on this wall by Barlo and Gods in Love.
Barlo X Gods In Love “MUTA” Italy. July 2016. (photo © Barlo)
Barlo X Gods In Love “MUTA” Italy. July 2016. (photo © Barlo)
Barlo X Gods In Love “MUTA” Italy. July 2016. (photo © Barlo)
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