Kromatic de sant Andreu de la Barca, a unos 25 km de Barcelona.
Nestled just outside Barcelona, Sant Andreu de la Barca hosted the first-ever Kromatic Festival, a bold venture in large-scale street art that ran from June 3 to June 23, 2025 — transforming municipal walls into immersive murals and hopefully igniting community dialogue.
This inaugural edition featured seven expansive murals, each selected through a mix of curated invitations and an open-call process, under the artistic direction of Rebobinart in partnership with the Ajuntament de Sant Andreu de la Barca and support from the Generalitat de Catalunya.
As is often the case today, the festival extended well beyond painting walls: guided mural tours, a children’s graffiti workshop, creative hands-on zones, and a lively closing celebration at Parc Central on June 14 – with neighbors and families in tow. Our special thanks to photographer Lluis Olive-Bulbena for sharing these images with BSA readers.
BSA Special Edition LOVE LETTERS TO THE CITY at Urban Nation Museum Newly released Interview snippet with curator Michelle Houston and Steven P. Harrington
The LOVE LETTERS TO THE CITY exhibition at Berlin’s Urban Nation Museum continues to evolve, provoke, and inspire—inviting new eyes and fresh conversations nearly a year since its debut. Curated by Michelle Houston, the show features over 50 artists from Berlin and around the globe, each offering their own “letter” to the city in the form of street art, sculpture, video, photography, and installation.
In this short video, BSA’s Steven P. Harrington sits down with Houston to revisit the themes driving the exhibition—urban transformation, inequality, climate crisis, and the radical hope that public art can awaken something deeper in our cities. Together, they explore the continued resonance of works by icons like Banksy, Lady Pink, Shepard Fairey, and Vhils, alongside emerging voices and Berlin-based practitioners such as Rocco and His Brothers, Susanna Jerger, and Jazoo Yang.
With the show remaining open for at least another year, this is your reminder: don’t miss the chance to experience a rare international dialogue unfolding inside—and outside—the walls of the museum. It’s not just a show. It’s an ongoing conversation between artists and the city.
Here in Brooklyn we move through a lush delirium—a rhapsody in blue and green, thick with summer and song, strident prose, a bit of jazz. In certain pockets of creativity the aerosol fumes from many a graff writer and mural painter are landing like a cloud on your sweaty skin and sliding off into the sewer below. The echos of Saturday night stereo is pounding in our memories with the adorable Atlanta hedonism of Bunna Summa and the swooning Puerto Rican charms of suavicito Bad Bunny. Vices and voices lilt through the neighborhood at night; a humidity induced dream that confirms we are all “New Yol” now.
Yes, the world feels upside down—truths twisted, systems slipping, war drums on many fronts—but for now it’s summer in Brooklyn, and we’re still in love. So let’s take our time… dance in the streets, drift across rooftops, wander the train tracks. Let the city hold us a little longer.
Here’s a glimpse of NYC graffiti, street art, and murals captured in this week’s survey, including Below Key, Ed Roth, EXR, Fumero, ICU463, Klepo One, Luch, Never Satisfied, Nick Walker, Sonni, TQRY, and Wizard Skull.
For three days in early June, the streets of Mollet del Vallès echoed with the clatter of ladders, the hiss of spray cans, and the upbeat pulse of DJs and market stalls. Artists from across Spain and beyond—including Laia, Uriginal, Sfhir, Lily Brik, Digo.Art, and Zurik—brought their visions to life on walls around the city, turning otherwise ordinary facades into large-scale, camera-ready installations. At first glance, the scene resembled the familiar format of the community-driven mural festivals that have blossomed across Europe over the past two decades. But here, the origin story takes a turn: this wasn’t a grassroots uprising to reclaim public space. This was a polished production by a commercial mural company with a massive artist roster and an even bigger understanding of branding, translating the original aesthetic of rebellion into a marketable vibe.
It’s easy to feel a pang of cynicism at what looks like another chapter in the ongoing domestication of street culture. Born in the neglected and often criminalized neighborhoods of 1970s New York, graffiti and the young brown/black/white kids who created it emerged with defiance, urgency, and a distinctly anti-authoritarian voice. The DIY energy and coded visual languages that fueled the subsequent Street Art scene once sparked public outrage and discussed topics that moved conversations on the street, but sometimes now are replaced with client briefs and sponsored walls. The mural isn’t a transgression—it’s a deliverable. Need a splash of urban edge for your brand? Book a mural. Want to boost team morale? Gather the staff for a graffiti-themed bonding exercise.
But the story doesn’t end there. Many of the artists involved in these commercial projects are veterans of illegal walls and train yards. They bring serious technique and deep cultural fluency to every surface they touch. And here lies the paradox of contemporary muralism: the best of these artists walk a fine line between selling out and showing up, managing to deliver public art that retains authenticity even when it’s wrapped in a marketing package. For some, the deal is worth it—access to large walls, financial stability, and the freedom to paint without looking over your shoulder.
We don’t need to mythologize the past to see how far things have shifted, and in many cases, improved. Some of the earliest street art festivals were organized by galleries and business owners who represented the same artists. Presumably, these artists are helping to pay the rent and developing their body of work. As “outside” as it once was, Street art is no longer the outsider; it’s part of the cultural toolkit, rolled out to energize neighborhoods, attract foot traffic, and present celebratory versions of “local identity.” The murals in Mollet del Vallès may not spark revolution or defy authority, but they do offer a snapshot of where street art stands today. This is what happens when “counterculture” trades its balaclava for a business card and becomes “culture”.
Liz Munsell, Greg Tate (ed.): Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip-Hop Generation
Reprinted from the original review.
The catalogue Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip-Hop Generation, accompanying the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston exhibition, is as multifaceted and dynamic as its subject. Edited by Liz Munsell and Greg Tate, this robust volume unravels the layers of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s artistic world and his role within a transformative cultural era. It positions Basquiat not just as an individual artist but as a pivotal figure in a constellation of intersecting movements reshaping art, music, and performance in 1970s and 1980s New York City.
The book is as much a cultural chronicle as it is an artistic study. It captures the chaotic, electrifying energy of a New York where the boundaries between “high” and “low” art dissolved, and the street became an unregulated gallery. The text delves into the social and cultural exchanges between the Uptown and Downtown scenes—worlds simultaneously divided and united by race, class, and artistic vision. These layers are vividly brought to life through essays that explore the societal forces shaping Basquiat’s era: the collapse of urban economies, the rise of hip-hop, and the cultural syncretism that defined the city’s creative spaces.
MARTHA COOPER LIBRARY: BOOK RECOMMENDATION
? | Title: Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip-Hop Generation ? | Publisher: MFA Publications, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (May 5, 2020) ? | Authors: Liz Munsell, Greg Tate (ed.) With contributions by J. Faith Almiron, Dakota DeVos, Hua Hsu, and Carlo McCormick ? | Language: English
Fourth of July weekend stretched into at least three days this year for many New Yorkers—some staying in town to catch the spectacular fireworks displays over the East River between Brooklyn and Manhattan, others escaping to Long Island, Upstate New York, or New Jersey. Chasing cooler air and a patch of green, they rent, borrow, and maybe even steal cars for the chance to go camping, canoeing, fire up a barbecue, and revisit Aunt Eloise’s legendary Ambrosia Salad—a chilled “salad” of mini marshmallows, canned mandarin oranges, crushed pineapple, coconut, and Cool Whip. Anyone want a hot dog?
Back in the city, stoop sales and block parties occupy the streets, murals are going up, and conversations drift between the Fourth of July Subway Series games with the Mets and Yankees, the newly approved rent-control rate hikes, and the eye-popping sums raised by the city’s elite to defeat the Socialist Democrat currently leading the mayoral race.
There’s also unease over the Big Beautiful Billsigned by the president on July 4th—an enormous, controversial budget that offers major tax breaks for the wealthy while cutting food and healthcare programs for the poor. It’s being called one of the most consequential—and divisive—pieces of legislation in decades. As you read over the text and see where the money is disappearing from and who it is going to, it may appear to you as a dark mirror version of a well-known children’s story, like a “Reverse Robinhood.” Yet, the debt will still increase…
Here’s a glimpse of the latest graffiti, street art, and murals captured in this week’s survey, including Aida Miro, Frankie Botz, Humble, Juliana Ruiz, Kong Savage, Lao Art, Lina Montoya, Minhafofa, MSK Crew, Musicoby, OSK, Paolo Tolention, Phetus88, Pixote, Qzar, Rambo, Sonni, Steve Sie, Tess, and Zoot.
Ten summers later, the Cvta Street Fest in Civitacampomarano is still a stubborn bonfire in Molise that refuses to extinguish—exactly the kind of smoldering ruin that draws Elfo like a moth with a paint roller. The village, half-abandoned and sliding gently into the weeds, gives him a ready-made stage set: crumbling stucco, porous stone, and few humans around to complain if the punch line lands a little hard. Perfect. Elfo, the “ever-clever minimalist” who prefers snappy text to splashy figuration, once again proves that a few uneven letters can shout louder than a ten-story portrait.
With “Mary Poppins Go Home,” he greets Civita’s volunteer army—those locals who sweep, scrub, and scaffold their way through festival week—with a wink and a nudge. No magical nanny descends from the clouds here however; this revival is strictly DIY. The brusque black letters, rolled straight onto a battered façade, laugh at both civic boosterism and the grand-mural industrial complex. The smallest of gestures, but he still lands a wallop – deserved or not.
Writer Giulia Blocal Riva describes it this way: “Rejecting the gigantism of large-scale murals, Elfo created three text-based works in Civitacampomarano—ironic, provocative, and surreal interventions. With nothing but a paint roller, the artist offered a reflection on the village’s condition, caught between depopulation and renewal.”
The vibe stays punch-drunk with “Hey Macarena Aiy”—a title that mashes up ’90s dance fever with this town now neglected – a strange nostalgic ennui that now haunts the age we live in. Elfo’s scrawl stretches across a wall so pitted it looks pre-chewed, teasing Civita’s awkward shuffle from near-ghost-town to Insta-friendly tourist stop.
Riva says: ” plays on the tension between the past, the present, and a possible future. Once nearly abandoned, the village is slowly becoming a tourist destination—thanks in large part to public art projects that have brought it to wider attention.” And, we may add, publishers and platforms like this one.
Finally comes the two-word mic-drop “Dubai Dubai,” comparing Molise’s cracked masonry to the Gulf’s glass pyramids. It’s a laugh-out-loud mismatch that also stings—why chase sterile luxury when you’ve got real history flaking into your lap? Says Riva, “Dubai Dubai draws its irony from the stark contrast—visual, social, and historical—between the tiny Molisan village and the hyper-modern metropolis of Dubai.”
Bordalo II 2011 – 2017 is an essential document of the Lisbon-based artist’s transformative approach to street art, sculpture, and environmental activism. Published in conjunction with his massive solo exhibition ATTERO in Lisbon, the book chronicles six years of Bordalo II’s relentless exploration of waste as both material and message. Known for his large-scale animal sculptures crafted from discarded objects, Bordalo II turns industrial, commercial, and consumer debris into expressive works that challenge the culture of overconsumption.
In ATTERO, his creative process is laid bare—viewers enter a warehouse where bicycles stack in layers, office chairs wave their legs in the air, and white garbage bags form soft, meringue-like piles. As an immersive study, the book mirrors the artist’s ability to organize chaos into order, crafting a visual language of urgency, beauty, and critique.
MARTHA COOPER LIBRARY: BOOK RECOMMENDATION
? | Title: Bordalo II 2011 – 2017 ? | Published on the occasion of Bordalo II’s ATTERO Exhibition in Lisbon in 11 / 2017. Hard cover. ? | Author: Bordalo II ? | Language: English
NYC’s 55th annual Pride March down 5th Avenue kicks off today, themed “Rise Up: Pride in Protest,” taking on a decidedly defiant stance on equality for all. Suppose you are in the subway, dance club, or park in Bushwick, Chinatown, or midtown. Like every June, it’s a lavender parade all weekend, with all members of the LGBTQUA+ communities from around the country and the world laughing, dancing, fighting, posing, and canoodling.
Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani clinched the Democratic nomination here this week after defeating former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, possibly igniting a polarized reaction across NYC politics. Hm, wonder if anyone will mention his religion in the next few months. What do you think? But, de facto, he’s going to be the next mayor – unless Bloomberg wants to blow more money before the November election.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Andre Trenier, Dirt Cobain, Drones, Dzel, Fear Art, Jappy Agoncillo, Jason Naylor, Jeff Rose, Kam S. Art, Manik, Modomatic, Par, Riot, Senisa, Tom Bob, Werds, and Zimer.
The new exhibition Terra Forma from Saman and Sasan Oskouei at IRL Gallery is a quiet storm—an atmospheric meditation on fragility, formation, and the traces of life left behind as nature and industry brush against one another. The brothers don’t shout their critique; it would be folly. Instead, they whisper it across surfaces that suggest ancient terrain, marginalized neighborhoods, and the factory floor—a cross-current of poetics and rusted precision.
Formerly known to many as the street-art duo Icy & Sot, the Oskoueis have moved far from their early stencil-protest days, carrying the soil—and perhaps a few chunks of pavement—of that journey with them. In Terra Forma, cherry-wood spheres rest in arms of bent steel, organic gestures rising from hard geometries. “These fabricated plants carry forth smooth spheres of warm cherrywood as if they were sacrificial gifts—or the building blocks of a not-too-distant future,” notes writer and historian Signe Havsteen, whose exhibition text captures the tension between the natural and the manufactured.
Saman & Sasan Oskouei. “Terra Forma”. IRL Gallery. (photo courtesy of the artists)
Mutation and evolution play out here as industrial flora absorb the ambient residue of urban life. Muted hues emerge from layered surfaces—traces of changing landscapes that resist permanence, hovering somewhere between formation and collapse. There is no romanticism; instead, the Oskoueis offer a quiet ambiguity, a recognition that the ground beneath us is ever shifting.
Steel curves because someone bent it; wood gleams because someone carved it. These are materials with histories, and under the hands of Saman and Sasan they become vessels for what remains. Terra Forma invites you to experience them as weight, as scent, as memory made solid.
Saman & Sasan Oskouei. “Terra Forma”. IRL Gallery. (photo courtesy of the artists)Saman & Sasan Oskouei. “Terra Forma”. IRL Gallery. (photo courtesy of the artists)Saman & Sasan Oskouei. “Terra Forma”. IRL Gallery. (photo courtesy of the artists)
At the corner of Primorska 3 in Novi Sad, where vendors at an informal NAJLON PIJACA flea market lay out used clothes and household items on the pavement, a new mural has appeared. It shows a burning crown, painted directly onto a low wall beside the rag-tag but prim market. The work is by French-German artist MTO, known for his precise technique and sharp social commentary.
The mural follows a national tragedy. On November 1, 2024, at 11:52 a.m., the concrete canopy of Novi Sad’s central railway station collapsed, killing 16 people. The incident was widely seen as a consequence of poor oversight and alleged corruption, particularly involving foreign construction firms. In response, students organized protests that quickly grew into a national movement. Their actions included campus shutdowns, an 80-kilometer march from Belgrade to Novi Sad, a bicycle ride to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, and daily 15-minute silences at the time of the collapse.
MTO’s mural, though unsanctioned, has become part of the response. “The painting of the crown on fire,” he writes, “is not a portrait of grief, but a declaration—that the monarchy of impunity must burn.” The crown isn’t aimed at royalty, but at what the artist sees as unchecked power. The mural now sits among other public expressions of remembrance, including flowers and candles at the station.
MTO, originally from France and based in Berlin, is known for its large-scale grayscale portraits, which often incorporate symbolic elements. His work has appeared in cities such as Lisbon, Berlin, Miami, and Sarajevo, usually featuring political and social critique. The mural in Novi Sad continues that approach. It also connects to broader public sentiment: in the U.S., the recent “No Kings” marches have voiced similar calls for accountability and limits on concentrated power. In both cases, public space becomes a site for protest and reflection.
This week, we mark the passing of Brooklyn-born photographer Marcia Resnick, whose camera cut through the cultural chaos of late 1970s and early 1980s New York punk subculture with clarity, bite, and precision. She wasn’t just in the room—Resnick was part of the scene. Her black-and-whites told the truth, or at least a version of it that compelled you. She caught peacocks like Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger, and Stiv Bators when nightlife was a contact sport and celebrity was going through a re-evaluation. Gritty or mundane, she captured pockets of the city—Mudd Club, CBGB—where the Ramones, Talking Heads, and Bad Brains blew out the walls and made mockery of mainstream, and where cultural conduits like Fab Five Freddy slipped between scenes, wiring punk to hip hop and graffiti before most people knew there was even a circuit.
Resnick had a particular skill: people—posturing poets, punk detonation squads, intellectual misfits—trusted her even when they shouldn’t have. Lydia Lunch, Klaus Nomi, Quentin Crisp, Jean-Michel Basquiat, William Burroughs, Laurie Anderson, Allen Ginsberg, and John Belushi – each showy in their own way and more iconic than the last- were captured. She made them look less like icons and more like complicated mammals with dreams, drugs, and dirty laundry. Her whole visual archive sings like a live wire, and we thank her for it.
Here is our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Branded Art, Elena Ohlander, INEPT, Karat, RIPE143, Rita Flores, Tones One, Trek6, and Yalus.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
