BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAYElle’s show on the 4th of May, Take Your Skin Off, is set to release the “ELLE Tattoo Girl” series, featuring hand painted photographs paired with reproductions. The show will explore transformation and the assumption of new identity. Graffiti is all about hiding one’s identity, using an alter ego, a shroud of mystery. On the same token, there is widely spread commodification of the graffiti artist in the public eye. This juxtaposition plays off of contemporary culture’s obsession with advertisement, fame, and the proliferation of image and icon. ELLE is exploiting the idea of notoriety and the visual competition with and collaboration of marketing space. Can someone be notorious just because their icon is everywhere? Because people can identify and have seen it? Is this fame?
Elle “Take Your Skin Off” at The City Don’t Sleep. (Brooklyn, NYC)
April 29, 2013
Afghanistan, Artists
ELLE is graffiti obsessed. In Take Your Skin Off, the artist exposes herself by unveiling the masked persona and identifying herself with her larger-than- life pseudonym. ELLE= ALL WOMEN. ELLE, SHE is represented throughout the city and standing fiercely. SHE is protecting all of the walls and is the equal counterpart of the male ego. Is the work about the female skin and how we choose to represent ourselves? Are we comfortable in “the skins that we are wearing?” Then again, maybe ELLE is just objectifying the woman… is ELLE a woman? Is ELLE a man? What is it with graffiti and the addiction of writing ones name over and over again everywhere? What happens when the lines are crossed and the graffiti writer starts pasting these images everywhere and suddenly it becomes like media/propaganda and advertising combined with street art? Why is this image everywhere?!
ELLE’s show, Take Your Skin Off, will be opening May 4th, from 7-10pm, at The City Don’t Sleep. (410 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY 11211). DJ Cat King will be spinning and Brooklyn SixPoints Brewery will be sponsoring the show. Come parteeee!
Queer artists and writers in the graffiti and Street Art scene have always been present but like everywhere else in the culture they were more or less bullied by peers to deny it or keep it hidden. I...
Mexican street artist Said Dokins clearly loves towers to create his work upon. And he adores covering them with all sorts of cryptic symbols and stylized letter forms. Now we find him doing a decided...
Hope it isn't trite, but don't give up on your dreams - that's what Street Artist AJ Lavilla advises in this piece on the sidewalk in Brooklyn. Dude and Dudette, this life can kick the stuffing ...
The worldwide fascination with murals expanded this month to Taiwan for the first exhibit of Pow! Wow! Taiwan! from organizers of the very similarly sounding festival in Hawaii. Actually, looking at...
We are texting every day and everywhere these days. Ben Eine appears to be doing it across the entirety of South Philadelphia.
Ben Eine. Mural Arts Program. Philadelphia. July 2015. (photo © St...
