The ironic Italian minimalist Elfo is returning with their latest intervention on an abandoned wall in their homeland. This time it contrasts the good-humored optimistic lyric of a Dean Martin classic on a crumbling building in the middle of the bush.
“It’s the best thing to do on the worst abandoned house in the middle of nowhere,” says Elfo.
That’s Amore!
New Zealand artist/muralist Owen Dippie has not been painting much outside lately, so it’s a pleasure to welcome him back to BSA today with a new portrait and tribute. “I painted this mural of my friend as a symbol of the infinite love between a father and his son,” Owen tells us. “This piece is also for everyone who has ever lost someone. As we look to them they look to us.”
The image is in the photorealist style Dippie is known for – portraits full of warmth and intention, so that they feel as if they could speak to you at any moment. We let Owen do the speaking here:
“I stretch my gaze towards the universe and watch for you my son, for every luminous celestial body that enters earth’s atmosphere is you illuminating the sky and sending me messages of hope in the falling stardust.
For Stu, moko in particular the Matatūhua (facial moko) has been the central tool he has used to heal from the grief and trauma of losing his son to cancer 8 years ago. While the tohu (symbols) on his moko are a reminder of his past grief and trauma; the moko also depicts his neverending love for his son and provides a map guiding him on his journey forward. Every year new lines are added or existing lines are deepened and the physical pain and spilling of blood are a healing release of the profound emotional pain held deep within the body.”
Mumbai is a city that captures the essence of Indian culture and tradition. When people think of Mumbai they may envision Bollywood actors executing their hook steps in flashy outfits with bright colors against extravagant backdrops. True, it is a place where Bollywood glamour and grandeur are made, but don’t forget the street food and Hindu festivals, and elaborate idols of Lord Ganesha. Also, the city’s Marine Drive, a picturesque promenade along the coastline, is a famous landmark that offers stunning views of the Arabian Sea. And yet, there is more to Mumbai than just the glitz and the glam.
Just a stone’s throw away from the Marine Drive lies Sassoon Docks, a hidden gem that has become a hub of Mumbai’s vibrant arts community. Located in South Mumbai’s historic fishing harbor of Colaba, Sassoon Docks has attracted a diverse range of artists, writers, photographers, and galleries. These artists are known for their focus on environmental issues and their collaborations with local fishermen. They use their work to celebrate and document the rich cultural traditions of Mumbai’s fishing communities. Through sculptures, paintings, and installations, they have created a unique tapestry that reflects the character and history of this charming area.
As part of St+art India’s festival, this year, invited artists had the opportunity to participate in murals, of course, but they also shared in the events that are rather normal for Sassoon Docks: talks, classes, performances, DJs. Recent events include researcher Shripad Sinnakaar presenting their poetry on Flamingoes in Dharavi, a light and sound installation, and the Indian drag queen Teya reading to kids and adults the children’s short story ‘The Many Colours of Anshu.’ They also hosted a conversation with pioneering documentary photographer Martha Cooper, the Swiss/San Franciscan muralist Mona Caron, and the Brooklyn-based Japanese street artist Lady Aiko on a panel moderated by co-founder and curator of St+art India Foundation Giulia Ambrogi.
Since Ms. Cooper was in Mumbai, she did us the great favor of capturing the works on the streets to share with the BSA family.
Today we have images from the Dharavi slum, a completely different street art project than the docks. It is an afternoon trip. According to some, it has become a larger tourist attraction than the Taj Mahal after it was featured in the movie “Slum Dog Millionaire”.
An ethnologist by training, Martha also befriends people. She asks if she can photograph them, so you will always get a sublime mix of art and people and the context in her collection. We’re proud to share these with you today; a city full of rich colors, street activity, elaborate design, religious symbols, and maritime history.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! Clocks spring ahead today in New York! Check it!
Taking a little trip to Miami and Wynwood District this week – its a lot warmer than New York.
Hey, is anybody worried about Friday’s second biggest bank failure in U.S. history after the collapse of Washington Mutual in 2008? Nah, right? Just like that ‘transitory inflation’. We’re holding this down, right? And that missing money from Wells Fargo accounts this week – just a technical glitch right? We got this, amiright?
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Entes, Modomatic, Rage Johnson, Gear, Sobek, Optimo NYC, Isabelle Ewing, W3r3on3, Juan Salgado, TATS004, Davel Art, and Sophy Tuttle.
Behind the scenes at “Beyond the Streets London” is a hive of activity, with artists deeply focused on installing their work and seeking assistance with tools and equipment. Curators, organizers, and lighting professionals are bustling up and down the stairs, carrying props, or ladders, and communicating with vendors and artists via text message. Salespeople are diligently crafting wall texts to accompany the art pieces. It’s a few hours before showtime, yet everything is somehow accomplished just as the first guests arrive for the preview.
Photographer Martha Cooper is electrified by the activity at Saatchi Gallery. The event preserves the rich history of graffiti, street art, and commerce while pushing forward with new trends and directions. Cooper, who has documented this scene since the 1970s, has attended and exhibited in “Beyond the Streets” exhibitions in New York and Los Angeles – and we anticipate the next stop could be Shanghai. This particular iteration showcases an evolving mix of archetypes and invention, drawing on diverse influences from the US, UK, and EU.
Cooper observed many surprising music references at the show. Rock icon Eric Clapton was at the opening admiring a photograph of text declaring him to be God while filmmaker, musician, and BBC radio host Don Letts had a personal collection of his memorabilia/ephemera on display. Ron West, designer of the “Duck Rock” boombox, also made a sudden appearance at the opening, allowing guests to pose with his creation. Among the standout pieces was a Bob Gruen photo of Malcolm McLaren holding that boombox in front of Keith Haring’s Houston Street wall, a masterpiece of intersectionality, if you will.
Overall, “Beyond the Streets London” offers a smorgasbord of colors, flavors, and influences that are difficult to encapsulate in one show. However, Gastman, the visionary, gives it a good try, with a respectful nod to the many artists who have shaped this worldwide people’s art movement. Enjoy these behind-the-scenes shots from Ms. Cooper.
Beyond The Streets – London. Click HERE for more details, the schedule of events, tickets, and exhibition times.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening:
1. Thomas Medicus / Human Animal Binary (2 Parts)
2. Tuco Wallach Pacifico / Lapinou Project by Cartie, Pouah & Tuco.
3. Project MUM Upcycles Ocean Plastics Into Fishing Gear
Part Damian Hirst, Jerry Andrus, and Bordallo II, this public work by Thomas Medicus takes different forms according to your position. Clearly, it’s a wild world.
It looks like Easter came early this year in Nendaz, Switzerland. Street artist Tuco Wallach appears to be having fun with this new bunny, stickers, origami, and skiing. For Tuco, the street art practice is often a family affair, and you can guess what the next generation is beginning to do. It starts with a series of lapinou (rabbits). With this kind of role model, you shouldn’t be surprised.
Lapinou Project, by Cartie, Pouah & Tuco.
Project MUM Upcycles Ocean Plastics Into Fishing Gear
Industrial waste is poisoning our air, water, food supply; in a capitalists mind its the transaction that is primary in the mind, not the repercussions on the natural world or their human counterparts. But to elevate the conversation, it is always good to find people using their ingenuity to reuse, upcycle, and give back to us all, rather than detract.
Yesterday we celebrated International Women’s Day HERE with a campaign in the United Kindom by artists Aida Wilde in collaboration with UNCLE. Spanish artist Marina Capdevila reminds us that women’s day is not only one day a year; it’s 365 days a year. Today we offer her contribution to empowering all women with a free-to-download poster in case you wish to print it as a reminder of all the hard work still to be done.
Hoy luchamos y trabajamos como cada día, para que se nos escuche, se nos tome en serio, para un laaargo etc etc etc. Cansada de recibir el 8M mails con propuestas para dar visibilidad a la mujer.. si seguimos así que, solo trabajaremos un día al año??
Nos queda mucho por hacer, pero aquí estamos todas juntas! 🙂
Click HERE to download your FREE poster.
New works today to mark International Women’s Day from Iranian artist Aida Wilde, who has placed them on streets in London, Bristol, and Manchester. In black and white with accents of fire, she’s using her bold design sense and collaged text, and forms – including photographs of her mother’s and sister’s arms – to celebrate women’s power and history.
A visual artist, educator, and printmaker, she references the ironic pop fragmentation of slogans in a manner that recalls Jenny Holzer, an early street art social critic and proponent of women’s agency in society. You can see echoes of a street ad approach in Wilde’s previous screen-printed installations and social commentary posters, their replication, and repetition. In this work there is a direct relationship between Wilde’s “Power rarely falls within the right hands” and Holzer’s “Abuse of power comes as no surprise.”
Now based in the UK, Wilde fled Iran with her mother and sisters during her country’s war with Iraq and she is looking at the current theocratic suppression of the women’s popular movement in her home country with horror. It is a repetition of the tale of women’s fight for equality you have seen before, one that echoes through modern history, now playing out in new streets, schools, and educational and religious institutions. Using the balanced formation of the triptych, Wilde says the hands of her mother and sister “are raised in iconic gestures of resistance atop marble pedestals”.
In a statement about the new works on the street, Wilde says, “This is the first time that I have incorporated all of my family in one piece of artwork. This is for ALL the mothers, sisters, brothers, and fathers around the world, who have suffered oppression, violence, injustices, and bloodshed. May our tears and suffering not be in vain. May we be united by peace in the fight for justice.”
Continuing to Address Disability Inclusion on the Street
Jana Danilović continues to make the street a little more inclusive with her murals and this new painting with a miniature 3-D printed version mounted nearby with a braille description stands out with its birds in flight. Part of a project that includes nine murals in Belgrade made accessible to the blind and sight impaired, this new piece by the Serbian street artist is in Vienna, where organizers hope to inspire enthusiasm in other countries for art that is more accessible.
In town for the annual Zero Project conference held in the United Nations building, Danilović was participating in the “Art in Passing” project created by the platform Street Art Belgrade.
“We are very happy and proud that we had the opportunity to present and realize the project outside of Serbia and to convey our experience to an international audience,” says Street Art Belgrade in a statement.
The reception of the new work and the message during the three-day conference seemed good. Organizers tell us there was interest in the project from conference participants from the USA, Australia, Bulgaria, Israel, and Great Britain. Perhaps it is only a matter of time before more artists begin working with others to create their murals and descriptions for those who are blind or sight impaired. We’ll be pleased to bring them to you when they appear.
“This project quite unexpectedly opened up a new field in art for me, how to act further in my work in order to include the tactile aspect. For most street artists, a democratic approach to art is very important, and it turns out that there is one group of people that is completely excluded, and this is one way to correct that,” says Danilović
To read our two previous articles about Art in Passing click HERE and HERE.
Links:
https://streetartbelgrade.com/
https://umetnostuprolazu.com/
https://zeroproject.org/
“In a world where the system alienates the most vulnerable, imposing a cynical or pessimistic outlook seems impossible to me,” says French street artist Seth. “Walls remain the space of resilience. Unlike cartoons, which leave no room for ambiguity, the choice to interpret a mural is essential. The curious are free to discover the hidden meaning.”
His new book “Seth On Walls” candidly offers these insights and opinions, helping the reader better understand his motivations and decisions when depicting the singular figures that recur on large walls, broken walls, and canvasses. A collection that covers his last decade of work in solo shows, group shows, festivals, and individual initiatives, you get the central messages of disconnection, connection, and honoring the people who live where his work appears.
“On the street, the first audience for the paintings are the people who live there,” says the former graffiti writer who has developed a distinctive otherworld for his usually faceless children that lies just through the looking glass, parallel to ours, its feelings running deep. The list of rural areas, often in the margins of the dominant culture and overcoming significant obstacles, is longer than your arm. Each time he creates a new mural, he consults the history, the stories that resonate in the tales told.
“They belong to the realm of childhood, where the impossible does not exist. But make no mistake: the apparent gentleness of the palette is not without menace,” says Sophie Pujas in the foreword. “Like children’s games, in which cruelty is always lurking, Seth’s murals are bearers of melancholy, imprinted with a secret darkness.” Pujas is confirming what you had been thinking, but could not quite identify; a longing for escape from the dramas and traumas that often scar us from the youngest age.
With rich, well-framed color plates, the collection takes you to towns and parts of towns you didn’t know about but are still familiar with. The attendant brief descriptors of mission and technique are matched in their conciseness by his account of his interactions with the locals, who many times help to fill the colors of his murals.
From his home country of France, he has traveled and stayed in communities far from his familiar environs, such as Palestine, Djerba Island in Tunisia, the Sichuan province in China, Indonesia, Haiti, South Korea, French Polynesia, and even in war-torn Ukraine. Conditions may be far from ideal, and sometimes are dangerous.
Still, he enjoys meeting new people, understanding their history and culture, and gifting them with pieces that sometimes resonate so profoundly that they build around them to preserve them when new construction threatens to destroy them. If he can find a way to encourage, that is also part of his mission; he says numerous times in various ways. In Ukraine in 2017, he reflects on the bitterness that fueled hostilities that were too unsafe for him to complete his project, he says in his account.
“Two years after my first visit to Popasna, I returned to paint the school’s last wall. The fear of sniper fire had deterred us from finishing the project. Although still fragile, the situation seemed more stable,” he says. “Despite the lull, propaganda ended up dividing families fed up with the situation. This painting spoke of the need to stick together, despite the events.”
We primarily chose Seth to paint the only mural inside the UN Museum for Martha Cooper’s career retrospective “Taking Pictures” in 2020 because the two have an overlapping interest in the anthropological, ethnological study of children’s play. During successive trips to Haiti and her most recent one with Seth, Cooper marvels at the innate creativity of humans when we are kids, and how resourceful children can be – even when there are few resources.
“Our shared love for the world and the imagination of childhood brought us together,” he says, “Forty years after her first trip to Haiti, off together to meet these creative children.” Remarking on the daunting economic, political, and environmental challenges faced by most of the folks they met, he says the kids were ingenious in their resourcefulness in making tools for their play world. “Bottle cars, yogurt telephones, spinning tops, flying kites – treasures of ingenuity that the children were proud to share.
“Seth On Walls” reiterates his connection to the otherworld we inhabited as children, almost as a way to get back there. The work in one decade is prodigious, yet in many ways, it is uniquely targeted to individuals, and in the process, finding the universal.
“Murals are nods and tributes to the spirit of the places they are part of,” says Pujas. “Each people has its own ghosts, spells and stories. Interpreting them on walls provides a continuation, further journeys. Bringing them to life helps to save them, to keep them alive. From wall to wall. Seth composes an artistic and subjective ethnography, recording the collective history of the countries visited as well as the warmth of remarkable encounters.”
SETH On Walls. Editions de La Martiniere. 2022. Distributed by Abrams. An imprint of ABRAMS, 2023.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week!
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Adriana Vila, Stikman, City Kitty, Raddington Falls, Miyok, Neon Savage, Vegas, Clone, Samva, SEO Panic, Miki Mu23, and 2Won.
In the last week, we’ve marked the first anniversary of the war now taking place in Ukraine with an installation by exiled Ukrainian street artist/muralist Waone in New York and exiled Russian artist Kuril CHTO in Lisbon. Today we bring news of a reorganized urban art-related biennale being mounted in Moscow this May.
“According to the Chinese curse, may we live in interesting times,” says Andrey Parshikov, curator of the IV Biennale of street art ARTMOSSPHERE on the website for this newest iteration of a festival mounted in public space and gallery space that is at least partially funded by the government. Selections of artists were made with consultation of a ten-member international committee of advisors from the commercial, publishing, institutional and intellectual world who have expertise in graffiti, street art, and its various expressions more broadly referred to as Urban Contemporary. The fourth edition of the international event, this year more than 70% are nationals; 38 Russian and 15 international artists.
The expert committee, according to organizers, have allowed for a diverse range of artistic formats and techniques to be employed by the participants, resulting in something that sounds like it will be more of an experimental exhibition than previous editions; featuring murals, graffiti, public art, installations, performances, and theatrical actions that will be open to the public.
“This season we are bringing back the original idea of the show – street art should live in the urban environment, in the open space,” says Sabina Chagina, one of the co-founders of the biennale in 2014 who is now the Art Director of the Winzavod Contemporary Art Center and Artistic Director of the Biennale. Winzavod has provided a varied artists compound of creative spaces for a decade and a half in Moscow that many credit as a laboratory for cultivating opportunities for experimentation and support for artists working in the public realm.
“Two years ago, ARTMOSSPHERE received permanent institutional support from the Winzavod Contemporary Art Center and became part of it,” says the press release about the collective exhibition that has launched parallel programs and special projects in public space in the last decade.
A difficult exhibition program to pull off during peacetime, this one is mounted during a hotly debated war that is being watched by most of the world. Like all arts programming, people will be measuring it at least in part to see how it responds to the times and political realities.
International artists include: ARIS ONER (Germany), Matteo Ceretto Castigliano (CT) (Italy), Amaro (Brazil), Pablo Harymbat (Argentina), IHAR (Belarus), Varenje Organism (Israel), GAYA SOFO (Armenia), Maria Bokovnia (Germany), Daria Goffman (Armenia), Filip Radonjic (USA/Serbia), Neon Spidertag (Spain), Hakob Balayan (Armenian Center of Experimental and Contemporary Art (NPAK) (Armenia).
Artists from inside the Russian Federation include: Anastasia Litvinova (Moscow), Sasha Braulov (St. Petersburg), Wearing Tail and artist Eldar Ganeyev (ZIP Group) (Moscow-Krasnodar), Lubov Vink (Krasnoyarsk), Philip Kitsenko (Moscow), Masha Smorodina (Moscow), Alena Troitskaya and Ksenia Sharapova (Moscow-Cyprus), Fork (Moscow), Alexander Gushchin (Yekaterinburg), Out Band Mucha (Samara), KTK (Moscow-Spb-Ekb), Anya, come! (Khabarovsk), Anna Tararova (Moscow), Elena Kholodova (Moscow), Alexandra Kuznetsova (Moscow), Ozerki, Andrey Shkarin and Maria Yefimova (Moscow), Galina Andreeva (Moscow), Krasil Makar (Ekaterinburg), Twenty Two (Moscow), New City Artists, Ivan Volkov (Protvino), Frukty Vrukty (Perm).
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY