Graffiti and street art are cyclical in many ways – reflective of society, urban planning, politics, current events, demographics… Currently the city of Barcelona is pushing hard on cleansing itself of the wild graffiti and street art that brought it so many tourists 15 years ago.
With the pendulum of real estate development and gentrification swinging from aesthetic chaos to antiseptic order, street artists are changing tactics as well, opting for smaller pieces that are quickly and surreptitiously installed.
“The Raval / Ciutat Vella neighborhood used to have 4 or 5 ‘orchards,’” says photographer Lluis Olive-Bulbena, using a slang term to describe empty areas between blocks where freelance painters like to adorn abandoned walls. “Nowadays there are only one or two.”
We’re pleased to introduce a number of artists specializing in smaller works; artists with names like BL2A, Karma, and Radical Playground. Each has their own style and each are part of a new wave using a smaller canvas, sometimes ingeniously; the sticker, the stencil, paste-ups, even ceramic – on the streets of Barcelona.
As you make your resolutions for the new year, you may find yourself trimming the bushes of your life, pruning away the unproductive branches, as it were. Polish poet Tadeausz Nowak (1930-1991) may have been thinking of clearing away the dead brush when he wrote about “ludzikowie” (petty people) in his “Frolic Psalm”.
Polish street artist Michał ‘Sepe’ Wręga was born in Warsaw and tells us about this new mural he painted in his hometown as a tribute to the poet. Always in touch with his graffiti roots, Sepe now plays with a sophisticated palette like an illustrator and painter, giving these figures a maudlin cheer, mired as they are in trifling fixations.
To better describe his intentions with these pink and blue painterly depictions, Sepe quotes Nowak for us: “Heaven, oh heaven, pricked with spears, pierced through with a cow’s horn, poor petty people standing beneath with their God swamped in plaster”.
“The glacier has melted by about one meter annually since the turn of the millennium,” says Swedish street artist Vegan Flava. In fact, he says, the southern peak was Sweden’s highest mountain until two years ago as the 40 meter thick glacier continues to melt due the warming of the atmosphere. Now it is lower than the northern peak.
How fortunes change.
Today we are looking at the artists’ newest mural in Linköping, the title of which references this specific melting occurence “From Here to the Southern Peak.”
The circuitous artist mind imagines a bird from the roots of a blue corn flower in the Swedish province of Östergötland, and this painter meditates on the birds’ flight over rooftops up to the Southern Peak.
Vegan Flava’s interconnectedness of themes reminds us that one vital life system is affected by and often dependent upon the next. “Everything we humans build and live from depends on a stable climate,” Vegan Flava says, “like our water supply, agriculture, infrastructure and healthcare.”
Welcome to the first BSA Images of the Week of 2021 !
We start our collection this week with an image of Christ crucified on a Facebook logo. If this is the level of subtlety that we can expect from the new year…gurl, we in trubble.
In fact, we have found that much of the organic street art that we find today has become increasingly strident in opinions expressed, especially around themes of social justice and political skullduggery. It’s all mixed in with favorites like pop figures, sports figures, cats. In a way, the artists are ahead of us, so we consider these images as the tea leaves for what is coming.
How will you interpret these messages from the street? Will you become emboldened? Scared? Or will they not have any impact on passersby?
Here is our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring 7 Line Arts Studio, Bastard Bot, Calicho Art, Captain Eyeliner, Calisi Maultra, City Kity, CRKSHNK, David F Barthold, Degrupo, Elle, Jeff Roseking, Joseph Grazi, NohJColey, Poi Everywhere, Sickid, Sticker Maul, and Stikman.
When it comes to street art, murals, graffiti, and related events around the world last year, the hits just kept on coming!
You may have missed some of the people, thinkers, artists, projects, and community resources that we shared with BSA readers last year. We’re pleased to share with you some of those stories you may overlooked.
The most extensive career survey ever exhibited, “Martha Cooper: Taking Pictures” is curated by Steven P. Harrington & Jaime Rojo (BrooklynStreetArt). For over a year Harrington and Rojo poured over thousands of photographs and hundreds of artifacts, memorabilia, and archives, working closely with Martha to ensure an accurate and complete presentation of Cooper’s career and to make certain the exhibition will appeal to a wide audience as well as her ardent fans equally. I
On October 2, the world’s most comprehensive retrospective of Martha Cooper’s photographic work, curated by Jaime Rojo and Steven P. Harrington (Brooklyn Street Art), officially opened. Unfortunately, the exhibition is currently closed due to measures against the spread of the corona virus. Nevertheless, we don’t want to hold back the highlights of the exhibition and share the recording of the livestream that was produced on the occasion of the exhibition opening here with you. Join us on a tour through the new exhibition and get exciting insights and background information.
In a “now” obsessed culture that is in the convenient habit of forgetting, the marches against police brutality and racism this spring and summer have had an earth-shaking quality mainly because there is little real knowledge about the US past. But take a serious look at the dynamics at play and the ugly behaviors and attitudes on display in 2020 are identical to those of say, a hundred years ago.