BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
Italian-Argentinian art director and illustrator Nacho Valentini spends much of his professional life moving through the polished worlds of branding, motion graphics, illustration, and commercial visual identity. But on the streets of Pescara, where he lives along Italy’s Adriatic coast, another side of his practice has quietly emerged in recent years.
In his ongoing urban intervention project “Enelgumeni,” Valentini transforms ordinary electrical utility cabinets into cartoon-like characters drawn from sports, cinema, celebrity culture, mythology, neighborhood archetypes, and collective memory. Looking at the boxes, he realized many already resembled figures with oversized heads, tiny bodies, and exaggerated feet; rather than imposing imagery onto the city, he describes the process as “revealing what is already there.” More than 50 painted cabinets now appear throughout Pescara and nearby neighborhoods, turning overlooked infrastructure into playful interruptions in the rhythm of daily urban life.
The project sits somewhere between street art, character design, and public-space psychology. Valentini approaches the cabinets less as blank surfaces for self-expression than as dormant personalities waiting to be activated. The figures range from lifeguards and fishermen to Maradona, Serena Williams, Harry Potter, Frida Kahlo, the Pope, and neighborhood workers whose identities often echo the spaces around them. The work carries the warmth and accessibility of illustration culture rather than the territorial language of graffiti, yet it still participates in the essential street-art impulse of reclaiming ignored urban surfaces and giving them new meaning.
BSA: Which city do you transform the electrical boxes in?
Nacho Valentini: The project takes place in Italy, mainly in the area where I live, Pescara City, along the Adriatic coast. It’s an ongoing urban intervention that continues to expand as I discover new boxes.
BSA: Do you have permission from the municipality, the city authorities, or the electricity company to paint them?
NV: Most of the boxes are painted in agreement with e- Distribuzione, the Italian electricity distribution company and a local cultural association. For many others, I’ve asked for permission, while in some cases the intervention has been more spontaneous.
BSA: What sort of paint do you use to paint?
NV: I mainly use water-based spray can, specifically Montana Water-Based. I like them because I can mix the colors to create new tones, they are very versatile and high-quality and do not pollute the environment.
BSA: Why do you think painting the boxes is a good idea?
NV: Because these objects are already part of the urban landscape but are usually ignored, often dirty and visually neglected. At a certain point, I realized that many of these boxes already follow the basic principles of cartoon character design: big heads, small bodies, and oversized feet. That intuition became the starting point of the project. I’m not really adding something new, I’m revealing what is already there. It’s a way to transform something purely functional into something playful and unexpected.
BSA: What sort of satisfaction do you get from painting the boxes?
NV: The most interesting part is seeing how perception changes. Once people notice the character, they can’t unsee it anymore. It creates a small moment of discovery in everyday life.
BSA: Does the public react positively to seeing the boxes transform into characters?
NV: Yes, very much. People often stop, take photos, smile, or share them. The most rewarding part is the direct feedback from people in the neighborhood. They often stop to say thank you for improving their area and their everyday routine.
BSA: How do you select the characters to transform the boxes?
NV The shape of the box always comes first. One of the initial rules I gave myself was to work with internationally recognizable, almost iconic and inspiring characters. This is important because in an urban context people often pass by quickly (on a bike or in a car) so the character needs to be immediately recognizable.
