BSA X ONO’U Festival 5: Day 5 – Cranio Brings Indigenous Life to Raiatea

This week BSA is checking out French Polynesia to get an appreciation for the Street Art, graffiti and street scene here while the 5^th Annual ONO’U is taking place. Join in the tropical action while we take you to Tahiti, Raiatea, Bora Bora, and Moorea to see the artists and the action.

Feeling blue in Tahiti even though you are surrounded by banana, mango, papaya, coconut, and pomegranate trees each offering the wild fruits of the island? Impossible.

Cranio. ONO’U Tahiti 2018 / Raiatea. June 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Yes, you are blue if you are one of Cranio’s characters, who remind us with a jolt that indigenous people of many shapes, sizes, and costume traveled and organized life on this earth long before we arrived.

With many ties to traditional costume and customs despite French Polynesia’s history of colonization, we have witnessed that there is an evident level of respect for native ways here across these islands as well.

Cranio. ONO’U Tahiti 2018 / Raiatea. June 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

With bright blue guys that have red eye bands across the face, these characters were originally based on indigenous people from his native Brazil and Cranio brings them with him wherever he goes to city streets, galleries, museums, and private collections throughout the world. Appearing suddenly on the street, he places them in curious situations that personify the cultural confusion that happens in the contemporary world that hasn’t allowed for traditional ways.

Here in Raiatea he converts a set of double doors into the entryway to a tree trunk, a fantasy world that you want to be true. Painting for two decades, Cranio’s semi-surreal settings have an adventurer’s sense of play for his blue buddies to explore and cavort in – yet they gently/pointedly poke fun at social, political and environmental weaknesses in the Euro-centric world.