Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. Invader: Djerba Invasion 2. Vhils Mounts “Haze” in Cincinnati 3. Okuda Takes Victory Lap of His Art/Life Accomplishments in 2020
BSA Special Feature: Invader: Djerba Invasion
A short film today from French street artist Invader on the island of Djerba. Previously painted by many international street artists a few years ago with the help of artist, businessman, and gallery owner Mehdi Ben Cheikh, here the adventures of the digital tile artist are documented along with his own observations translated into English. Few women appear on the streets or on the screen, but you’ll find many men approving of the context-appropriate pieces he affixes across cities of the island. All this art is sure to become part of a treasure map for tourists to discover street art.
Invader: Djerba Invasion
Vhils Mounts “Haze” in Cincinnati
in 2020 Vhils had a solo show “Haze” at the Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center. Filmmaker José Pando Lucas captured the process of the installation and Vhils’ technique in vivid detail.
Okuda Takes Victory Lap of His Art/Life Accomplishments in 2020
A new illustrated tome capturing the black and white work of one-half of Ukraine’s mural painting duo Interesni Kazki welcomes you into the past wonders and future imaginings of a world framed in “Phantasmagoria.”
Full of monochromatic fantasies at least partially inspired by the worlds unleashed by Belgian inventor and physicist Étienne-Gaspard “Robertson” Robert, Waone’s own interior expanding fantascope of miss-appended demons, dragon slayers, riddle-speaking botanicals, and mythological heroes may borrow as deeply from his father’s Soviet natural science magazines that brimmed with hand-painted illustrations – which served as his education and entertainment as a child.
Swimming and slithering through his subconscious may also be his college studies of agriculture and his many travels through the world with his co-painting mate AEC. The two ingenious kids had begun as part of a graffiti crew in the early 2000s but pursued non-letter representational surrealism in striking color on walls in nearby Kyiv as well as Europe and the Americas; a successful mural and fine art partnership that brought acclaim and gallery exhibitions as well as massive walls before ending so that each could pursue individual creative visions.
This book, the first of two volumes of graphic works, explores Waone’s move from the street into the studio, from full color into black and white, from aerosol and brush to etching, lithography, augmented reality, and sculpting.
With the aesthetics of a musty and mythical library, the illustrations open the preconceptions of psychology, offering myriad views through recombining familiar elements into unusual associations. In the process, you travel with Waone as he dedicates himself to this uncolorful view, which is nonetheless rich, if not tinged with a bit of antiseptic horror.
Notable is his most recent piece from 2020 – a fetal being floating through the cosmos that he calls “Apple of Discord“ – that suggests that perhaps these dissonant times are giving birth to new orchards.
“This artwork depicts the birth life and death of the ego,” he explains, and indeed he appears to have seen beyond this celestial fog elsewhere in the book. “When you have had this experience when you’ve become an extraction, you are able to perceive the world in a completely new way.”
Perhaps in a way that is Phantasmagorical?
“Worlds Of Phantasmagoria” By WAONE Interesni Kazki. Vol. 1. Graphic Works 2013-2020. Wawe Publishers.
International Women’s Day is only controversial for those who feel threatened by the idea of equality and freedom.
Perhaps that’s why, according to current statistics, women continue to fight and protest against the gender wage gap in Spain, as well as against violence against women. The national female unemployment rate is 17.4%, compared to 13.8% for men.
In the Madrid district of Ciudad Lineal, a vandalized mural of 15 pioneering women like Rosa Parks, Nina Simone, Frida Kahlo, and Billie Jean King must have appeared dangerous in some way to a group of (presumably) men – an enormous act of defacement of a painting that joined others that day around the city. The mural had been under threat for weeks, according to The Guardian.
Elsewhere in Barcelona, strident activist painters created new murals in Tres Chimeneas Park to celebrate International Women’s Day this past weekend. We’re pleased to share with you a selection of the murals painted for the occasion courtesy of BSA contributor Lluis Olive Bulbena.
Two things you can count on with graffiti/street art; 1. Beef 2. Banksy will quite likely wiggle his way into the situation
Despite the death of graffiti writer King Robbo in 2014, his devoted team continues to pine for the days when the writer and the clever stencilist were busy egging each other on with aerosol. When you hear the words “Team Robbo” you may hearken back to Ye Olde 2009 when a feud began with Banksy going over a piece by the King in 2009.
Now the prison that once housed the brilliant bard and flamboyant fop Oscar Wilde is not-so-mysteriously adorned by a certain lad traveling all the way here in Berkshire from Bristol. Banksy imagines getting away from a confined life with this new piece called “Create Escape.” In an entertaining video below we find Banksy overlaying his nighttime spray capers with the gentle tones and textures of painting icon Bob Ross. You may smile when he talks about painting setting you free.
Suddenly the street art/graffiti network is buzzing with the news that the typewriter has been passionately buffed! And just look who is taking credit…
We congratulate our partners at the Urban Nation Museum in Berlin for the re-opening of the museum during these difficult times. We applaud their commitment to the arts and to the institution and the people who they serve, including the artists and the community both local and international. As curators of the critically acclaimed current exhibition “Martha Cooper: Taking Pictures” we are elated to know that more people are going to be able to enjoy the exhibition now extended until May 2022.
The URBAN NATION Museum will open for you again on March 16. Here’s what you need to know regarding your next visit:
Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, there are limitations in place. As usual, admission is free of charge. However, access to the exhibition is currently only possible with a time slot ticket reserved not less than 24 hours in advance. Therefore, please book your time slot ticket at least one day before your planned visit to the museum.
▪️ Visitors will be admitted to the museum only with a booked ticket at least one day in advance via their digital ticket system. ▪️ A maximum of 12 people per hour are allowed to enter the museum. The maximum time spent in the exhibition is 60 minutes. ▪️ All visitors must register on-site with their contact details. ▪️ Access to the museum is only permitted with a medical face mask or FFP 2 mask. ▪️ A maximum of three tickets can be booked per person. ▪️ Guided tours and admission of groups of 5 or more are not possible for the time being.
Urban Nation asks for your understanding of these measures, which will allow them to reopen the URBAN NATION Museum within the framework of the current regulations of the Berlin Cultural Administration.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. Did you set you clocks ahead one hour? Spring forward!
We open today’s edition of BSA Images Of The Week with Peruvian artist The Monks. He’s been splashing the streets of New York with his vibrant work… and with a much-needed infusion of color during our winter grays – as a prelude to the imminent Spring in NYC.
We’re feeling good. Is that bad? Maybe it’s the lack of daily tweets that used to hector and batter the populace for 4 years that we are slowly emerging from beneath. It’s like the Twitter Gods are showing mercy on us all.
Maybe it’s the centrist rescue bill finally passed this week that will place newly-minted cash into the hands of the newly-minted poor and desperate working-class, slowing the steady decades-long growth of the gaping chasm between haves and have-nots. (Still “no” to $15 minimum wage, “no” to Medicare for All, “yes” to a bombing in Syria). You can’t blame the Democrats, though – they only have the House, Senate, and White House.
Maybe we’re also feeling partially positive because we had two consecutive days of sunshine and even experienced 60-degree temperatures. Daffodils are positively poised for popping through the dog poop in public parks presently. No doubt we’re also feeling hopeful because a deluge of new art will begin rushing through city streets in the next few weeks as artists, like everyone else, will be racing outside like giddy teenagers.
Not that they haven’t been getting up already. They have.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Clown Soldier, CRKSNK, Donut, Fours Crew, Goog, HAZE, Kiwi, Meter, Nemz, Polka, Rambo, Roachi, Samva, Sara Lynne-Leo, Texas & Gane, The Monks, Toath, Zexor, and ZigZag.
What the hell just happened? Has it been a year? Or has it been 10 years? Or just one long nightmare/daymare? Or has it been 10 years? Did we already ask that?
In March 2020 we awoke to a world that was transforming before all of our eyes, yet we felt so cut-off from it and each other. The first days seem so long ago as we mark the first anniversary of the pandemic. Still, the initial shock of those days resonates in our chests so strongly that we confidently talk about a collective global trauma that has indelibly marked a generation.
From Stockholm to Mexico City to Barcelona to Bethlehem to New York to LA, BSA brought you street art that was responding with fear, derision, critique, hope, and humor to the never-static, always evolving barrage of Covid news. Stuck inside and afraid to expose ourselves to each other, we New Yorkers became accustomed to experiencing the outdoors only through our windows, connecting with neighbors we’ve never met who were also banging pots and pans or clapping and waving and yelling.
We listened to ambulances screaming past our windows every half hour or so during those first weeks, imagining the torn families, the terrified fellow New Yorkers now being rushed to the hospital and separated from their loved ones without a goodbye, gasping for air. We wondered if we would be next.
When we did go to the streets, they were empty – or nearly. In New York this was unheard of. In this bustling, noisy metropolis, we experienced a daily disconcerting quiet. That is, until the killing of George Floyd by cops finally pushed the anger/anxiety into the streets all summer.
The deadly hotspot of New York quelled, but the fires of Covid spread west, grabbing communities who thought they would avoid impact. At the same time, local, state, and national leaders fumbled and argued or famously callously ignored the desperation of citizens, occasionally admirably filling the shoes they were elected to occupy, often misstepping through no fault of their own.
We have no particular wisdom to offer you today beyond the obvious; this pandemic laid bare inequity, social and racial and class fault-lines, the shredded social net, the effect of institutional negligence, the ravages of 40 years of corporate privatization, and the power of community rising to the occasion to be in service to one another in ways that made us all more than proud.
Here are some of our favorite Covid-themed street art pieces from over the last year, a mere sampling of the artistic responses. Interspersed we paste screenshots of the daily events (via Wikipedia) in 2020 that shaped our lives, and our society.
We mourn the losses of family and friends and the broken hearts and minds in all of our communities. And we still believe in the power of art to heal and the power of love to balance our asymmetries.
As NYC went on complete lock-down and New Yorkers were ordered to remain in their homes in complete isolation the city’s residents organically joined together in a collective 7:00 pm ritual in support to the first responders. To the nurses, doctors, paramedics, trash collectors, public transportation, police, fire fighters, supermarkets workers etc…with their services and sacrifices we, the residents of this megalopolis were able to keep out hopes for brighter days to come.
Video of four former presidents urging people to “roll up your sleeve and do your part” and get the vaccine.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. “We Still Fight” by South Italy Street Art 2. “No Pain No Gain” Graffiti & Tattoo with Brus & Victor Chil 3. Polish National Ballet Interprets Radiohead’s “Reckoner”
BSA Special Feature: “We Still Fight” by South Italy Street Art
“I had a dream, to change the world,” said Angela Davis …. it is the same dream that moves our art.”
“Fighting against the injustices of the world and for the realization of a better world. Fairer, more humane, more beautiful. Our tribute to all the women who drive every revolution.”
“We Still Fight” by South Italy Street Art
“No Pain No Gain” Graffiti & Tattoo with Brus & Victor Chil
How many tattoo artists do you image are former or current graffiti writers? It is a high percentage.
“Graffiti & Tattoo, two worlds invariably attracted to each other, with many of their proponents active in both fields whether it be writers who love tattoo culture.”
An insightful and frankly tender video that contemplates the emotional world that accompanies and encompasses the two disciplines, uniting while contrasting. Here you are presented with two “virtuosos” of their crafts; A Don of Roman wildstyle named Brus and the Barcelona tattoo artist Victor Chil.
Polish National Ballet Interprets Radiohead’s “Reckoner”
A thoroughly modern interpretation by choreographer Robert Bondara, who also does the costume and light design.
The dancers are Yuka Ebihara and Kristóf Szabó with the Polish National Ballet.
Choreography: Robert Bondara Music: „Reckoner” by Radiohead Costume and Light Design: Robert Bondara
Polish National Ballet Dancers: Yuka Ebihara and Kristóf Szabó
“The ‘Beyond Walls’ project aims at creating the largest symbolic human chain around the world, promoting values such as togetherness, kindness and openness to the world,” say organizers of this project that has its tenth stop in this historic site of the tragic slave trade. With five frescoes in total, he painted four of them in the floating village of Ganvie, which was at one time a refuge from slave capture raids.
Additionally his is painting a fifth fresco by the ocean in the village of Abouta) in the Ouidah district, he says, “the beach that saw millions of slaves sent off across the Atlantic.”
This is the 10th step of the project for the land artist Saype. He says that after nearly two years he has visited 3 continents and 37 people have helped paint 77,300 square meters with biodegradable paint.
The world is slowly making movements toward the door as if to go outside and begin living again in a manner to which we had been accustomed before COVID made many of us become shut-ins. Parisian street artist FKDL was no exception, afraid for his health. However, he does have a very attractively feathered nest, so he made the best of his time creating.
(EN) FERME POUR INVENTAIRE (Closed (In) for Inventory) by FKDL
On the first anniversary of his 56-day confinement, we look at what art project he made for himself, using items he had collected. A serious gatherer of magazines, photographs, record albums, and objects that capture his attention, his studio is a small personal museum and archive – full of boxes and shelves and music from the era of his mid-century birth. It’s a golden age that he happily gains entrée to, especially when commanded by a global virus.
“March 17, 2020, the unprecedented experience of confinement begins in France,” writes Camille Berthelot in the introduction to Closed (in) for Inventory, “Time that usually goes so fast turns into a space of freedom, and everyone has the leisure or the obligation to devote himself to the unexpected.”
FKDL quickly began a project daily, sorting and assembling 10 items and photographing them. He posted them to his Instagram by mid-day. Eventually, he saved the photographed compositions together and created this book.
“My duty of tidying up and sorting out turned into a daily challenge. I dove like a child into the big toybox my apartment is to select and share my strange objects, my banalities, my memories, my creations, and those of others,” he writes. “I gather these treasures, valuables or not, in search of harmony of subject, forms, materials, and nuances.”
(EN)FERME POUR INVENTAIRE by Les Editions Franck Duval. Paris, France.
Parisian OG Lek has been working on the streets for the last three of his five decades, growing up close to the Mecca of European graffiti in the 1980s, Stalingrad. By the 90s he was ready to experiment with abstract and futuristic, with a balancing influence from the rigid uncompromising Bauhaus. Today he easily contemplates the illegal and legal, commissioned and commercial, and his compositions are not always easily categorized as graffiti, street art, or mural.
But he is easily called a pioneer among peers, having been one half of Lek and Sowat, as well as a member of Da Mental Vaporz, French Kiss, LCA, GNS, RAW, and 1984. Here we present a brand new gig he scored with Art Azoï last month in his hometown.
LEK in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris. (photo courtesy of Art Azoï)LEK in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris. (photo courtesy of Art Azoï)LEK in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris. (photo courtesy of Art Azoï)LEK in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris. (photo courtesy of Art Azoï)LEK in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris. (photo courtesy of Art Azoï)
Over the last few spring-like days in Berlin, her portrait rose slowly about the streets, reminding us that her moral courage continues to have an impact today on International Women’s Day. It’s only been a recognized holiday in this German city for a year, says Urban Nation museum director Jan Sauerwald. Franco’s visage is the first to occupy what has been officially identified as the museums’ ‘Brave Wall.’
“Realizing this political mural on the theme of women’s rights together with artist Katerina Voronina is a special moment for the URBAN NATION Museum program,” he says, “To present the first ‘Brave Wall’ in Berlin and Germany on this day in cooperation with Amnesty International puts the project in a fitting context.”
The artist was chosen by a panel made of an equal number of Urban Nation and Amnesty International participants, along with journalist Miriam Davoudvandi. The joint goal on International Women’s Day is clear.
“Women’s rights are human rights and therefore an important part of our human rights work. I am very pleased that the first ‘Brave Wall’ in Germany was designed by a woman, Katerina Voronina, and honors the impressive commitment of human rights defender Marielle Franco,” says Dr. Julia Duchrow, Deputy Secretary-General of Amnesty International in Germany, in a press release.
An illustrationist and motion designer, Katerina Voronina successfully evokes the resolute spirit of fighting for human rights in the portrait of Franco, “With the realization of this ‘Brave Wall’ I had the opportunity to bring a special and courageous woman into focus.” she says.
Meanwhile, in Spain, artist and muralist Marina Capdevila identifies an obvious question about saving only one day to pay tribute to women in this new piece.
“Today, we still are fighting and working nearly every day to be listened to, to be taken seriously,” she laments, reflecting on the sly kind of dismissiveness she feels about her art practice sometimes. “I’m tired of receiving 8 million emails with proposals that offer to ‘give visibility to women,’ ” she says.
“If we continue like this, will we also eventually only work one day a year?”
Until such a day, she’s loving life as a painter and savors the sisterhood that brings her support and opportunity. “I am fortunate to have wonderful women in my life who inspire me, help me, and above all, make me laugh.”
Marina Capdevila. “365 Dias Luchando” (photo courtesy of the artist)
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
