If you are ever looking for an artist to paint your basketball court, Giulio Vesprini has that on lockdown. This is his seventh court project in recent years. Also, it would be helpful if your court is in Italy.
Calling this court of many colors “G O A L – Struttura G070” in Sant’Elpidio a Mare in Castellano, Italy, Vesprini says he has grown fond of these projects because he feels like he upgrades each small community when he creates and paints a unique scheme for each one. The artist says he believes that the courts create a sense of character for some neighborhoods and that the park itself becomes a meeting point between culture, sport, and nature.
This park already has a noted feature; “The park is famous for its astronomical observatory and my work pays homage to this fantastic place with its surrounding landscape by observing the moon, the sea, the beautiful countryside and the Via Lactea (Milky Way).”
San Luis Potosi is culturally rich, has a UNESCO protected historic downtown, and just hosted the Miss Mexico pageant last night – yet most people think of other Mexican cities before this one. It’s been an educational week discovering the city, its rooftop beer gardens, its cathedrals, it’s markets, museums, its seedy side of town with sex workers openly chatting, its gorgeous green parks that pop up every three blocks, its friendly helpful people, its mezcal, and its expansive safe walkways. This city may be one of Mexico’s most underrated.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Janin Garcin, Diego Rafel Lopez, Isela Vargas, Oscar Medina, Patricia Macias Mendizabal, Carlos Mejia, Says David, Panda, PaPa, and Celoz.
One of the best ways to see a city is through its advertisements, especially when handmade. Perhaps we’re disposed to thinking this because increasingly there is a blurred line today between typical commercial promotions and street artists branding their legal/illegal work on the street with social media tags or websites that lead to products to purchase.
Currently, at the Center for the Arts of San Luis Potosi (Centro de las Artes de San Luis Potosi), the “Sensacional” exhibition invites you to witness the graphical and design interpretations you’ll find on the streets of nearly every neighborhood – and you’ll feel welcomed. Walking through the galleries and seeing the figures, fonts, and colors is like sampling daily flavors and emotions you’ll find on Mexican streets. It’s a handmade open vernacular that speaks directly in the design and imagery of gas stations, corner groceries, signage, flyers, packaging, labels, posters, and announcements. The images may be painted with intense color schemes, skewed proportions, a familiar cartoon or celebrity, and humor; a pleasing sense of humor specific to the culture that is rather free of the usual contrivances.
Trilce Ediciones México. It has traveled to many cities since 2003 – including Glasgow (UK), Pasadena (US), Washington (US), New York (US), Boston (US), San Francisco (US), San Antonio (US), Zaragoza (Spain), Alexandria (Egypt), Bogota (Colombia), Zacatecas (Mexico), and Mexico City. Here in San Luis Potosi, we were happy to see many of the cultural influences that form the aesthetic of the street all joined together. The curators are well organized and the show is presented with categories that meld trade, food, aesthetics, nationalism, religion, animals, transportation, machismo, burlesque, music posters, and Lucha Libre.
Eclectic and entertaining, the everyday language of comics frequently appears in many images hand-created by untrained artists who function as advertising agencies for a client list that may include mechanic shops, churches, food vendors, liquor stores, mariachis, and wrestling expositions. Violating all kinds of corporate, copyright, and art school/trade rules, these idiosyncratic graphics are untouched by the blanded global commercial aesthetic, making them more authentic, human, and, definitely, pleasing.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. WATER III – A film by Morgan Maassen 2. Graffiti TV 101: Tank 3. No Cry Babies – Volume 2
BSA Special Feature: WATER III – A film by Morgan Maassen
WATER. We simply can’t live without it. That’s obvious – a natural resource that never should be privatized. Water also provides us with immense pleasure and this video leaves no doubt about its power, its mystery and its beauty.
Graffiti TV 101: Tank
Crisp editing and on-point painting skills put this video on par with the best. A modern euphoria enjoyed by a select few, Tank possesses the history and technique to show he is topping his game.
No Cry Babies – Volume 2 via Graffiti TV
Spray Daily writes that this is “A postcard from London filled with metro and train actions.” They call it “No Cry Babies – Volume 2”
“I’ve faltered, but I haven’t given up,” says Calendonia Curry AKA Swoon. “I believe in it and I hope you do too.”
She is speaking about the much ballyhooed Braddock, Pennsylvania church which she purchased a decade ago and parlayed into an art project, or two. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Now we enter “The Sanctuary”.
Now along with her Heliotrope Foundation the street artist is proposing to convert the church into a sanctuary for persons transitioning from incarceration and programs to assist. She’ll be donating it to Ronna Davis Moore, an originator and shepherd for similar such safe havens, – but first Swoon is making sure there are new windows in the building, and is raising money via Kickstarter.
“The Heliotrope Foundation has rallied our community to fix the roof in a traditional way (no tiles this time), so now the building is secure and dry,” Swoon says, “and our next step is the windows.”
READ MORE about how you can participate in the final delivery of this planned safe haven.
“It’s a specific project in a specific place,” says Swoon, “but I believe that it is a beacon in many ways, and that its success will have a ripple effect, addressing questions like: How do we help people heal so that they no longer make harmful choices? Can participating in an effort to re-enfranchise the black community with land and assets be part of a journey of healing for people who have benefitted from our country’s brutal legacy? Can artists work alongside social workers, activists, and community organizers to create spaces that challenge cycles of intergenerational trauma and create the potential for lasting change?”
Now you can help in this new chapter for Swoon’s Braddock church, which will be called called Donelle’s Safe Haven. The church will join Z’akiyah House, a house Swoon bought and fixed up a few years ago for a similar mission.
Swoon recalls the exchange that took place to finally get to “Yes”.
Swoon says she placed the call to Ms. Davis Moore and asked, “Ronna, if we can get this church building to you with the roof and windows fixed, do you think you could take it from there, and make it into something that continues to serve your mission?” She stresses that Davis Moore took all things into consideration before answering.
“Ronna is no naive visionary like I was, so she didn’t answer right away,” says Swoon. “She looked at the space, she contacted her community, she slept on it – and then her answer came back. ‘I have a vision for what it can be, and if you can get it that far, we can take over the rest.’ ”
These are the origins of the Universe, the concept of duality, the personification of diety, the reverence for the dead, the mourning of loss, and the paralyzing fear of the devil. These weighty themes and others have regularly been addressed through masks, costumes, and dance in rituals dating back to 3000 B.C. in Mexico. During the Pre-Hispanic period, people became gods and devils, eagles and jaguars – by donning masks.
Wearing a mask in ritual or celebration, one could assume powers over the harvest, influence relationships, attempt to sway health outcomes and even predict the future. Later, pagan practices were folded into western religious practices to gain new adherents (and donations) to the church, fortifying their importance in the histories re-told to future generations.
The masks we saw this week at the National Museum of the Masks (Museo Nacional de la Máscara) in San Luis Potosi were formidable, frightening, and fascinating – and you are guaranteed that there is never a dull moment as you walk from room to room. The mechanics of artifice and imagination summon some of the strongest emotions and associations perhaps because of their human scale. Whether made for “Las Mascaradas” or in later centuries at “El Carnaval” one realizes that sophistication and skill can be revealed in the most intricate pieces with valuable materials and those of the roughest cut or bluntest application of color.
Housed in a colonial palace in the beautiful historical center of the city that was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2010, surprisingly this museum presentation appears to have missing texts, holes where items once were, and darkened lights – detracting from the grand history of masks in general, and Mexico’s role in particular. A final section dedicated to masks worn by wrestling performers known as luchadores is a missed opportunity to connect the ancient with the contemporary and pay homage to the powerful impact and significance these masks have had in multiple media and on modern imaginations.
Overall the masks and costumes are incredibly impressive, drawn from regions and tongues across the country and centuries. Seeing these masks in this grand former home gives visitors a greater appreciation for the role artists have played in communicating the sacred and profane, the rituals of celebration and mourning, the creation of drama and myth, and the creation of traditions.
Certain sectors of Mexican society have a women problem. More accurately, they have a lack-of-reverence-and-respect-for-women problem.
Ongoing violence against women has pushed many in civil society to fight back in an organized fashion across classes, ages, trades, professions, religious and academic spheres. With marches, protests, street art, and speeches millions of Mexican women from all sectors of life and demographics have been coming out to the streets to let their leaders know that they are fed up.
“Ni una más” is the slogan most often used; “Not one more”.
In March protests in more than 20 states across the country women called for an end to gender-based violence. The Mexican newspaper Milenio reported extensively on protests in Mexico City and included news about marches in cities large and small; Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Tijuana, León and Puebla – all saw marches, as did numerous smaller cities including Morelia, San Luis Potosí, Saltillo, Cancún, Mérida, Oaxaca, Guanajuato, Los Cabos, Veracruz, Zacatecas, Hermosillo, Tlaxcala and Chilpancingo.
Several women’s rights organizations have accused President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of not making the problem a top priority in his administration. Even worse, some assert that he has callously blamed the problem on the victims themselves, adding to a general perception in the country that the president really doesn’t care. According to the Guardian, ten women are killed every day in Mexico.
This week in the historic district of San Luis Potosi we saw more references to this topic than any other in the street art and graffiti on walls. The technique and format of creation varies, but the messages are empowering and they illustrate a determination and resilience of people who are advocating for change.
Slogans are stenciled on fencing, wheat-pasted graphics are stuck to door ways. Here in La Calzada de Guadalupe, a green and vibrant park that tourists flock to, a statue paying tribute to woman’s rights is adorned with fresh flowers and information about the Femenicidios (or Femicides) that terrorize people lays at its feet.
Every few blocks you can see a poster seeking missing young women taped to light posts. In a city that has such a strong reverence for history and the sacrosanct place of women in its evolution, it is striking to see such issues so fervently discussed in the art on the street.
Intergenerational conflict ebbs and flows through history – and right now, along with so many other points of societal contention, it appears to be flowing.
In a matter of a decade, for example, the term “Baby Boomer” has transformed from something to be admired to the shortened term “Ok Boomer”. Coined by their own progeny – it is meant as a dismissive, even contemptuous disregard of the generation born after WWII. Sort of ironic, given the rebellious young hippies that the Boomers once were, to see them openly derided by Millenials.
And the youth… ahh, the youth. They’ve been bothersome for years – or centuries, to be exact. 4th Century B.C.E. carries a quote from rhetoric by Aristotle about those darn kids:
“[Young people] are high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life, nor have they experienced the force of circumstances. … They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.”
Bifido. Everything changes but you’re always the same shit. Sicily, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)
While we aren’t sure what the backstory is of this new photo-pasted mural by the Italian street artist Bifido, one may surmise the screaming old and young subjects have reached a tipping point in the high-intensity arguments that occur between generations. Added to this fight is that the one the young artist tells us surrounded it’s installation here in Sicily, Italy.
“This piece is the fruit of many days of work. Work often hindered both by the hosting community and by the very people who commissioned it. It was a process made up of arguments, silences and distances difficult to bridge. During my stay, many times I changed my mind about what I was going to do and I finally decided to honor some teenagers I met there, without whom I couldn’t have done anything. Those teenagers come up every single day against a narrow-minded and short-sighted mindset which they stubbornly try to change.”
Bifido. Everything changes but you’re always the same shit. Sicily, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)
It sounds like it was a very intense experience, and yet we all know the fervor the artist speaks of. Diplomats also council that the only way forward is usually some form of compromise.
“So, no compromises,” says Bifido of his experience. The name of the work also indicates the rancor that can lead us to wars – again it rings through the centuries; “everything changes but you’re always the same shit”
Bifido. Everything changes but you’re always the same shit. Sicily, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)Bifido. Everything changes but you’re always the same shit. Sicily, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)Bifido. Everything changes but you’re always the same shit. Sicily, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)
The sheer number of organic and community walls in Berlin means that you are exposed to a great variety of styles and opinions and perspectives through art daily on the street. There is a sense of pride about this as well – and we’re pleased to see free speech here while privately held social platforms are growing tumors of censorship. Long live the contradictory opinions that challenge our minds and our assumptions.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: 1UP, Dave the Chimp, Lacuna, Anne Bengard, Murad Subay, Caro Pepe, Sam Crew, Dafne Tree, Little Ms. Fierce, Emily Strange, Anne Baerlin, Kiexmiezn030, Cippolini187, Artmos 4, Juliana Zamoit, Paris, Urteil, and Mate X.
As the weather turns warmer, activities on the streets become more fevered, energetic, free.
Graffiti writers burst out of the doors to their apartments and houses with backpacks filled with markers and cans, looking for opportunities to express themselves, to claim space, to be seen. Last week in Spain, a crew of the most actively known writers in Catalonia got together for a graffiti jam on the embankments of the Rio Congost a few miles from Barcelona. BSA contributor and photographer Lluis Olive took a day trip to the area to document and share the results of the jam with our readers.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. George Booth life at The New Yorker 2. DOES X JORIT team up for a large mural in Napels, Italy. 3. PichiAvo in Linz. Timelapse video.
BSA Special Feature: George Booth life at The New Yorker
Directed by Nathan Fitch, the iconic artist George Booth looks back on fifty years of work for The New Yorker.
Drawing Life: George Booth
DOES X JORIT team up for a large mural in Napels, Italy.
You may still be wondering what Post-Graffiti is, since the term has appeared as early as the 1980s and yet, graffiti persevered decades afterward and is just as vital today as it ever has been. Perhaps we’re being too literal.
The Speerstra Gallery says in their new press release that “Seven’s characters have taken over the walls of Paris. Accompanied by a text calling out to passers-by, Seven’s figures are the voice of the oppressed whose lives have been turned upside down by horror, whether they are from Africa, Syria, Ukraine or elsewhere.”
Seven. “Borders”. Speerstra Gallery. Paris, France. (photo courtesy of the gallery)
At times illustrative, figurative, you can see forms congregating, laying down in a group, rising from the group. The scenes bring to mind those chased by war, now reduced to a number, simplified to a logo of human. It reflects these people as much as our desensitized approach to others in need. To address the complexity of the masses, Seven appears to be stripping away to the most elemental, looking to evoke a storyline with his characters. With “Borders”, he is on his way.
Seven. “Borders”. Speerstra Gallery. Paris, France. (photo courtesy of the gallery)Seven. “Borders”. Speerstra Gallery. Paris, France. (photo courtesy of the gallery)Seven. “Borders”. Speerstra Gallery. Paris, France. (photo courtesy of the gallery)Seven. “Borders”. Speerstra Gallery. Paris, France. (photo courtesy of the gallery)
Exhibition and artists reception: Saturday 14 MAY at 2:00 pm
SPEERSTRA GALLERY / PARIS / FRANCE 24 rue Saint Claude 75003 Paris
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
