All posts tagged: Poes

Martha in Mumbai for St+ India, Visits Dharavi Slum

Martha in Mumbai for St+ India, Visits Dharavi Slum

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.

Ella & Pitr. France. STart – India. Dharavi, Mumbai. (photo © Martha Cooper)

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.

Ella & Pitr. France. STart – India. Dharavi, Mumbai. (photo © Martha Cooper)

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.

Ella & Pitr. France. STart – India. Dharavi, Mumbai. (photo © Martha Cooper)

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.

Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Guido van Helten. Detail. Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Guido van Helten. Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Oliver. STart – India. Dharavi, Mumbai. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Dzia. Belgium. STart – India. Dharavi, Mumbai. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Aravani Art Project. Bangalore. STart – India. Dharavi, Mumbai. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Aravani Art Project. Bangalore. STart – India. Dharavi, Mumbai. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Aravani Art Project. Bangalore. STart – India. Dharavi, Mumbai. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Aravani Art Project. Bangalore. STart – India. Dharavi, Mumbai. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Mies Toland. USA. Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Tyler. Mumbai. Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Milo. Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Boiling milk for a religious ceremony. Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Unidentified artist. Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Guido van Helten. Australia. Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Unidentified artist. Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Zero. India. Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Poes. France. Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Unidentified artist. Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Elisa. Spain. Unidentified artist. Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Workshop with children with Dzia. Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Anpu Varkey. Delhi. Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Unidentified artist. Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Loko Poko Studio. Mumbai. Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Avinash Kumani. India. Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Jarus. Canada. Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Jas Charanjiva. Mumbai. Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)
Dharavi, Mumbai. India. (photo © Martha Cooper)

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“XXL” with Skunkdog, POES, and Mohamed Said Chair at Montresso Foundation

“XXL” with Skunkdog, POES, and Mohamed Said Chair at Montresso Foundation

Montresso Foundation at Jardin Rouge introduces a trio exhibition in its still-fresh exhibition space here just outside Marrakesh.  The three French speakers (two from France, one from Morocco) have a certain taste for fooling with modern cultural touchstones, each bended or blending original meanings to reflect the chaotic modern age often seen in street culture.

XXL. Montresso* Foundation. Marrakech, Morocco. April 2019. (photo © Cyril Boixel)

A haven for a be-jewelled collection of old-school graffiti writers and street artists and those simply absorbed with a family of “urban” aesthetics, Jardin Rouge has often mentored many of these self-taught artists in the professional practices of a modern artist. With the exhibition XXL they take these loosely related three in a direction toward museum exhibition and perhaps institutional recognition in the future.

Tangier-born Moroccan Mohamed Said Chair hasn’t hit 30 but has already jumped from a career in finance to a career in art like a superhero. With gallery exhibitions to organizing group shows, he’s managing the professional side as well as the technical and aesthetic.  

Mohamed Said Chair. XXL. Montresso* Foundation. Marrakech, Morocco. April 2019. (photo © Cyril Boixel)

Here his realistic folding of chiascuro technique with overbloated superheroes turns comic. A critique perhaps of Millenial star worship, here his anonymous consumers and porcine figures lie haplessly in costume, but not in reverie.

Globetrotter POES was born in Paris and lives in Lyon, a product of hiphop, the simplicity of 80s-90s cartoons, and his own explorations of Mesopotamian/ Sumerian, Greek, Roman traditions.  Here his mythologies freely borrow from historical works and contemporary pop to create stinging rebukes of the arms industry and various forms of political skullduggery.

Mohamed Said Chair. XXL. Montresso* Foundation. Marrakech, Morocco. April 2019. (photo © Cyril Boixel)

An abstract expressionist with punk roots and a doodlers aesthetic, Skunkdog prizes the piling up of paint and sculptural materials to make canvasses appear tactile and 3-D.  Each thought collides in a colorful hazard, sometimes resulting in unfettered madness, other times a low-fi feral and effervescent folk mud.  Anti-symmetric, the energy comes from the alchemy.

Poes. XXL. Montresso* Foundation. Marrakech, Morocco. April 2019. (photo © Cyril Boixel)
Poes. XXL. Montresso* Foundation. Marrakech, Morocco. April 2019. (photo © Cyril Boixel)
Poes. XXL. Montresso* Foundation. Marrakech, Morocco. April 2019. (photo © Cyril Boixel)
Sukunkdog. XXL. Montresso* Foundation. Marrakech, Morocco. April 2019. (photo © Cyril Boixel)
Skunkdog. XXL. Montresso* Foundation. Marrakech, Morocco. April 2019. (photo © Cyril Boixel)
Skunkdog. XXL. Montresso* Foundation. Marrakech, Morocco. April 2019. (photo © Cyril Boixel)

XXL

MOHAMED SAÏD CHAIR, POES and SKUNKDOG

Montresso* Art Space Marrakech, Morocco

From April 20 to June 30, 2019

Visits by appointment on Fridays and Saturdays at info@montresso.com

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Where Graffiti Art Is The Rose of The Desert : Spraying Outside the Jardin

Where Graffiti Art Is The Rose of The Desert : Spraying Outside the Jardin

When you are a renowned graffiti writer living 25 minutes outside of Marrakech at an artists compound and painting in your studio to prepare for an upcoming exhibition on canvas, sometimes you still are activated by wanderlust to go out and catch a tag. Or something more elaborate.

Ceet . Tilt . Clone. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jardin Rouge has hosted some of best known American and European graffiti writers such as members of Tats Cru, Daze, Ceet, Jace and Tilt as well as Street/Mural Artists like Kashink, Mad C and Hendrick Beikirch (ECB) over the past few years, inviting them to paint and sculpt new works in roomy quiet studios and on the buildings of the property itself.

As you leave the compound and take a long walk or motorcycle ride up the lonely and narrow dusty roads and gaze through ruddy fields past lines of olive trees you’ll discover bubbled and colorful aerosol works on dilapidated structures, half walls, and cratered remnants of buildings that rise just above the rich red soil.

Ceet . Tilt. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Suddenly the visual language of the inner city overflows the margins into agrarian areas, this time by way of a fervent patronage of this painting practice as art form. The distinction happens more often these days with festivals, galleries, museums, brands, collectors, fans inviting urban artists to suburban or ex-urban oasis to create their signature work very far removed from its original context.

Until now most of the fiery debates about graffiti and Street Art moving into the mainstream have focused on whether it belongs in institutions, or needs to be studied in academia, or if it ceases to be graffiti or street art when it is made for the gallery canvas or brought into the gallery directly from the street. Here, it is going anywhere but mainstream.

Clone. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

What do we call graffiti writing or characters from one city when it is introduced to another city, as has happened for decades thanks to the nomadic nature of couch-surfing artists and the adventurous practices of the graffiti tribe. And what happens when it goes for a hike further afield?

What do you call it when artists like Yok & Sheryo are on perpetual spraycation in places like Ethiopia or Mexico or when ROA is spraying his monochromatic animals in fields of Latin America or when New York graffiti icons are providing a backdrop to livestock that are chewing their cud and flipping their tales at flies?

310. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Is the graffiti and Street Art practice intrinsically tied to location or citizenship or local identity? Is is somehow made new by its audience?

There is much concern expressed today about graffiti and Street Artists losing their “street cred” (ibility) or authenticity by painting permissioned murals in their home cities or at festivals they have been invited to.

310. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

In many countries and regions there are no norms regarding aerosol art, so none are violated when an artist decides to spray a multicolored bubble tag on an old milk house next to a collapsed dairy barn.

One wonders how to contemplate the work of artists whose culture has often been marginalized when the work itself keeps appearing in unexplored margins.

As usual, the movement of these art forms and their various practices are in flux, continuously on the morph. At the very least the new context draws the work into strong relief, allowing a new way to regard its aesthetics.

310 .  Ceet . Tilt. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Reso. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Reso. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Reso. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo

Reso . Goddog. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Reso. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Goddog. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Goddog. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified artist. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ceet. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ceet. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ceet. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ceet. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tilt . Poes. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ceet . Jace. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ceet . Jace . Bio Tats Crew . 123 Klan . Klor.  Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ceet . Bio Tats Crew . 123 Klan . Klor. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ceet . Bio Tats Crew . 123 Klan . Klor. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tats Crew BG183. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ceet . Bio Tats Crew. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Reso. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rezo . Rolk.  Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Basila . Unidentified artist. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

DE. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified artist. Jardin Rouge, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

 

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