Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! It’s a melange of cities and styles this week from Berlin, Brooklyn, and Chihuahua, Mexico. The week has been a traditional holiday time in New York and in the US, and people really reconnected with each other with a vengeance, so eager are we to pretend that these are normal times. It is a laundry list of what is going haywire today. Still, families hosted families, many had “friendsgiving” celebrations, volunteered to serve meals to folks through various organizations, or sat quietly at home and made a list of things they were thankful for. Gratitude is the attitude.
Join us for this week’s wild ride through the streets and hidden margins of cities, our weekly interview with the street. This week we feature BAD35, Birds CRS Crew, Bjorn Out, DSE, ESFER, Fractures194, J’Dart, Mate, MODE NBC, One Truth, Roker TCK, Sestry Feldamn, and TBanBox.
Mexican street artist, muralist, and graffiti writer Mode Orozco — known as Mode NBC — is currently transforming the perimeter walls of Estadio de Béisbol Manuel L. Almanza in Chihuahua City with a sweeping new mural. Originally from Tijuana and active for more than 25 years in graffiti and large-scale portraiture, he has gained recognition for honoring sports icons, including UFC champion Brandon Moreno and boxer Yamileth Mercado, on public walls throughout northern Mexico.
This latest commission from the State of Chihuahua highlights standout hometown baseball players, along with respected broadcasters, sports journalists, and Mexican Olympians who have earned medals on the world stage. Mode NBC has been working on the piece intermittently for the past two months and expects to complete it by the end of December — adding another significant chapter to his ongoing celebration of athletes who inspire their communities.
When Seth said ‘Laos,’ there was no way she was going to say ‘no,’ Martha Cooper will tell you.
After all, Laos is where she learned to drive a motorbike in the 1960s — a place she remembers by its dusty roads, warmth, and creative kids who know how to make their own fun. Sixty years later, she’s back with a camera in hand, documenting French street artist Seth Globepainter (Julien Malland) as he works his familiar magic at the edge of the Mekong.
Luang Prabang — a UNESCO World Heritage town framed by two rivers — is a place where ritual and imagination walk the same path. Early mornings mean barefoot monks collecting alms; afternoons mean kids splashing by the river or painting bold birds across the school walls. Seth’s murals slide right into that rhythm: playful figures, wide-eyed wonder, a bit of folklore and fantasy — public art as storytelling through the words and images of kids.
Seth was sure to stop at Lao Friends Hospital for Children, the only free pediatric hospital in Northern Laos. His mural — inspired by Hmong embroidered history cloths — became what he called an “extraordinary garden”on his Instagram – possibly one of heritage and healing. When Seth is around, young students are often seen taking brushes into their own hands, adding birds and shapes to a Free Expression Wall that gives them a chance to be collaborative. Martha, never far from the action, captures the imagination and concentration in their faces — the same instinct that drew her to kids on the streets of New York’s Lower East Side in the 1970s.
Further north in the rural Hoy Bor and Hoy Phoung villages, Seth teamed up with NKSEEDS to transform school walls into collaborative canvases. One piece — titled “Past Future” — honors Khmu tradition with a woman carrying her child. Another project invited every kid to paint a “fetish bird” flying toward the light. Students walked on bamboo stilts and played sport games together- and of course grabbed brushes as Martha documented small hands, bright colors, and the delight of making something permanent together.
Folklore, Masks, and Mischief
Meeting the Royal Ballet mask-maker in Luang Prabang gave Seth a new spark. He adapted a demon mask from the Phra Lak Phra Ram — Laos’ own Ramayana — and painted it atop the crouched body of a local kid. Minutes later, a boy wearing the real mask squatted beside the mural, turning tradition into a living side-by-side remix. Martha’s photos catch a perfect squeeze between imagination and reality that defines Seth’s work.
Martha also managed to document the alms-giving ritual at dawn that Seth participated in. Every morning, usually at dawn, Buddhist monks walk silently through the streets in a single line carrying bowls.
Laypeople — often sitting or kneeling — place food into the monks’ bowls. This food is usually prepared rice, fruit, or other simple offerings. In Laos, this ritual is widely observed. Laos is predominantly Theravada Buddhist, and alms-giving is a daily part of community life.
This trip marks another chapter in Seth and Martha’s shared habit of chasing childhood imagination across the world — Kenya, Haiti… and now Laos. With support from curator and author Alisa Phommahaxay (Asian Street Art: Une Anthologie), who helped open doors to schools, families, and the children’s hospital, they kept everything relaxed and personal: art made with people, not just for them.
In dusty schoolyards and along the Mekong’s quiet edges, a camera and a paintbrush appear to be a splendid combination that brings people a little closer. Kids still invent games from whatever’s nearby — bamboo poles, bare feet, a splash of color — and Martha still recognizes that spark in an instant. Walls evolve, decades pass, but that simple creative heartbeat remains easy to find.
This week we’re hitting Berlin and Prague on a quick-turn street survey, looking at how each city is evolving its own visual language in real time. You feel the contrast immediately: Berlin may still carry the reputation for boundary-stretching experimentation, but Prague is stepping forward with its own confident push — inventive palettes, disciplined letterforms, and murals that challenge the assumptions of what belongs in a city celebrated for its Gothic and Baroque silhouettes. Where Berlin is sprawling now with more sanctioned façades and yet an intense train graffiti scene, Prague concentrates its energy into transitional zones and tight networks of writers and muralists. Both cities are accelerating — but Prague surely has a particular spark right now, maybe because it’s new to us, or because you can divine a kind of tension between reverence and rebellion that makes walls talk in new ways.
Berlin’s streets are currently balancing big, commissioned façade murals with a still-active, letter-based graffiti scene that keeps pushing trains, rooftops, and hidden spots. Artists and writers are freely mixing spray paint with stencils, paste-ups, installations, and interventions, turning infrastructure and abandoned spaces into experimental laboratories. Political and social commentary remains central and fully reflects the conversations you hear, with quick-strike formats like posters and stickers addressing gentrification, migration, targeted geopolitical screeds, and a sense of increasing surveillance. At the same time, more legal and curated walls are emerging, opening opportunities for scale and collaboration while possibly sharpening a tension with the underground scene. If that’s a correct assessment, Berlin points toward an even sharper split: increasingly hybrid mural practices on sanctioned surfaces and faster, more disruptive actions in the rest of contested spaces, which tourists may not sense are diminishing, but locals assure you they are.
Smaller in scale than Berlin but fueled by a strong talent pool, Prague’s hybrid of academically inclined muralism and street-taught graffiti culture feels agile and confident. It is a city where the past stands tall, and the future writes itself across the margins. Maybe you would say it thrives on a tension between its historic Gothic and Baroque architecture and a new generation that likes to test what belongs elsewhere on the city’s walls. You’ll find those who push a hybrid language of abstract fields, figurative lines, and unconventional color, and others inject an assertive brand of pop-inflected text and graphic punch. As it is the 21st century, we are interested in finding conceptual figures we hear about who are raising questions about public space and control. At the same time, the graffiti scene keeps the pulse fast and restless: rooftops, tunnels, and rail corridors loaded with wild palettes, overlapping styles, and formats that nod to tradition, while stretching its edges. You’ll find most of this in transitional spaces — industrial seams, construction coverings, legal walls, and edges just beyond the postcard views.
Here is a quick drop into a melange of things we found in both for our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring 1UP Crew, B.S., Caer8th, Dibs, Exit RIP, EXOT Diamonds, Gunther Schaefer, MORT RIP, ONG, Paradox, Phoebe Graphy, Tona, XOXO, ZMG, and Zosen Bandito.
Marina Capdevila has completed a new mural titled “Compartiendo Muros”, painted at Colegio Público Nuestra Señora de la Concepción in Madrid. The project is part of the Madrid City Council’s Sharing Walls program, which brings artists into public spaces across the city. The project also includes workshops and conversations with students at the school.
“Compartiendo Muros” features Capdevila’s recurring cast of older women in playful, contemporary scenes — here on skateboards, surrounded by plants, and outfitted with everyday tech.
Marina Capdevila. Compartiendo Muros Project. Madrid, 2025. (photo courtesy of the artist)
As her style continues to evolve, Capdevila refines her language of joy, exaggeration, and everyday rebellion — especially when her subjects are the elders who are often cropped out of the picture. Long-time observers will note that a direction that feels more textured and improvisational, without losing the clean graphic pounce/punch she’s known for.
Marina Capdevila. Detail. Compartiendo Muros Project. Madrid, 2025. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Hard-edged shapes bump against charcoal-like marks and quick gestures, as if she’s inviting us into the creative process rather than polishing it too much. Her stylish grandmothers sprawl across the wall with irrepressible swagger; eyes dart from sunglasses to oranges, plants, dogs and daisies — a mural in motion with soft spray volumes and playful scribbles. Cute or coarse? Obviously both. With her tightening of this hybrid technique, spatially stacked for impact, it’s a notable step forward.
Capdevila’s ongoing ode to aging with sun-ripened color and individual flair lands as pure confidence. The artist’s own personal style runs right alongside it — a spirit of joy, and a reminder of our lifelong superpowers.
Marina Capdevila. Detail. Compartiendo Muros Project. Madrid, 2025. (photo courtesy of the artist)Marina Capdevila. Compartiendo Muros Project. Madrid, 2025. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Born outside Sydney and based in Glasgow, Sam Bates—SMUG—began the way many graffiti writers do: skateboards, hip-hop, and late-night missions to get his name up.
That early graffiti period sharpened his sense of scale and texture. Over time, his work stretched beyond letters toward faces and figures—painting freehand—evolving into what some have called a stylized realism. We might say it is stylized realism with a twist, because the people SMUG paints are recognizably themselves and yet just a half-step into a dream—close enough to touch, strange enough to study. His characters, whether a tired worker, a mischievous child, or a curious bird, are rooted in real life and heightened just enough to suggest a larger story and possibly a punchline you hadn’t anticipated.
SMUG’s walls can now be found in cities across Europe and Australia—from the Glasgow City Centre Mural Trail to festival sites in Edinburgh, Melbourne, Kotka, and North Hobart, as well as the rural stretches where grain silos tower like cliffs above their towns. Silos have become something of a specialty, especially in Australia, and his work has joined a growing effort to treat these industrial structures as community landmarks rather than leftovers waiting to decay. Juddy Roller, the Melbourne-based creative studio behind the Silo Art Trail, has been central in connecting SMUG and other artists with local communities and producers, including the new mural here in Kapunda.
Kapunda’s silos stand at the edge of one of Australia’s earliest copper mining settlements, and the story told through paint reflects that history—an 1840s miner at work underground, a scene lit with grit, not nostalgia. It’s a reminder of the physical cost that built the town and, by extension, the country. This miner is not a romantic emblem; he is a working figure whose story has largely gone unpictured. Scale and proximity do the rest: a giant face meets the viewer head-on, turning past industry into a present encounter.
As history often does, it becomes a conversation about now. Many here in Kapunda say the town is changing—creatively, economically—and the silo artwork is one of the most visible signs of that shift. The project grew from a community campaign, and the result feels local in the best way: a monument to people. In SMUG’s hands, realism serves memory and identity—and, as you know, a wall (or a silo) can tell a fuller story than a plaque ever could.
If this is stylized realism with a twist, the twist may be perspective: look up, look closer, and see what a town chooses to show the world on a canvas impossible to ignore.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. Photographer Jaime Rojo hit the ground running upon getting back to dirty old Brooklyn this week from a Berlin/Prague tour. Lots to report from there on the walls, in the gallery, and in the museum spaces – and more to come for you to enjoy. In the meantime, here’s what he found on the streets of NYC; a mash-up of handstyles, graphics, pop cues, fine-art chops, humor, sarcasm, reverence, and straight-up rebellion — cultures colliding and talking back.
We begin the show with a new portrait of the much-loved graffiti and street art photographer Martha Cooper, based on a photo by Corey Nickols and painted by Swed Oner (Mathieu Taupenas) in Bushwick with Joe Ficalora and the Bushwick Collective by his side. Born in the south of France in the 80s, a graffiti writer in the late 90s, Swed Oner is now known for his hyper-realistic, monochrome portraits of people transformed into religious icons – featuring a “halo” motif for framing.
Featuring Dzel, EAZV, EXR, Gloom, Homesick, IMK, ISB, Jodi Da Real, KAMZ, Mike King, Notice, RIP Money, Shwan McArt, Silent, Smaer, Two Five, VENG, Warios, Werds, and ZOZS.
For more than two decades, MrKas has carried his Porto-born graffiti instincts across continents, painting walls from Ireland to Malta, Greece, the Netherlands, the Azores, and beyond. Festivals such as Waterford Walls, Meeting of Styles in Tampere, Kings Spray in Amsterdam, and the Pompeii Street Art Festival have shaped his evolution, each one adding another chapter to his ongoing dialogue between realism, memory, and perception. Yet no matter how far he travels, there is a steady pull that brings him back to Portugal. The return is not nostalgic but purposeful—a way to ground his practice in the places that shaped his earliest sense of community and identity.
MrKas. Generations. Riodades, Portugal. (photo courtesy of the artist)
What began as youthful graffiti—an impulsive act sparked by a stray spray can on a Porto street—has matured into a visual language built on precision, layered imagery, and portraits that seem to exist between dimensions. Today, he combines the discipline of photorealism with deliberate ruptures: cut-outs, geometric interference, and the feeling that an image is being assembled or disassembled in real time. The tension is central to his work.
MrKas. Generations. Riodades, Portugal. (photo courtesy of the artist)
His newest mural, Generations, created for the Douro Street Art Festival in the village of Riodades, carries some of those ideas into a deeply local context. Painted on the walls of the town’s school, the work reflects the artist’s engagement with the region’s everyday life. “In Riodades, among the vineyards and mountains of the Douro Valley, I found a story of identity and belonging,” he says.
MrKas. Generations. Riodades, Portugal. (photo courtesy of the artist)
The mural depicts three figures—“three souls,” in his words—each one connected to a facet of the village’s character: childhood and learning, music and harmony, tradition and joy. In the section showing the musician’s hands playing an instrument, the composition tilts between realism and constructed image, pointing directly to the layered, intergenerational act of keeping culture alive.
This appears as a recognition of the people who define the Douro’s cultural continuity. “This mural is more than paint. It’s a tribute to the people who keep culture alive. Here, the future begins with roots—strong, real, and human,” MrKas tells us.
MrKas. Generations. Riodades, Portugal. (photo courtesy of the artist)MrKas. Generations. Riodades, Portugal. (photo courtesy of the artist)
For one week this fall, BlankMagBooks in New York quietly hosted photographs by Sonny Gall from her new publication 99 of NY, released by King Koala Press with text by Mila Tenaglia. The exhibition was small but telling — a passing moment in the life of a project that had already taken a decade to form.
Described by the publisher as “a compositional and documentary endeavor that unfolded naturally over the course of a decade,” 99 of NY gathers 99 photographs across 110 pages, printed in both color and black and white, in a durable hardcover, album-sized format. True to King Koala’s limited-edition tradition, it’s a finely produced object — modest in scale and rich in substance — that rewards slow looking and quiet reading.
Gall’s images vibrate and render when leaning toward the overlooked: empty lots in Queens, warehouse walls, families at home, scattered pigeons, playgrounds under scaffolding. They are fragments of a living city seen with patience and affection, moments that feel at once offhand and deliberate. Tenaglia’s accompanying texts deepen those impressions without overexplaining, their language as sharp and unadorned as the photographs themselves, yet evocative of the unseen – with a poetic wandering appropriate for the attitude of discovery. Together they capture what it means to move through New York — not as spectacle, but as encounter.
Gall, born in Milan and long settled in New York, brings a deep familiarity with the city’s hip-hop and graffiti circles and a sensitivity to its architecture and light. Tenaglia, from Rome by way of Pescara, came to New York through journalism and documentary film, drawn to stories that find beauty in imperfection. Their partnership is grounded in trust, a love for street culture, and shared intuition: one sees, the other shapes the narrative.
99 of NY feels like the city it portrays — restless, imperfect, alive. The brief gallery presentation served as an echo of the book’s essence, but it’s the pages themselves that hold the weight: a decade or more of lived experience distilled into images and words that ask to be read slowly, with attention and care.
We spoke with Gall and Tenaglia about their work:
Brooklyn Street Art:When did you first begin to see yourself as a photographer, rather than simply someone taking pictures?
Sonny Gall: Honestly, I still see myself simply as someone who takes photos to satisfy a personal instinct and sense of pleasure. It was friends, acquaintances, and even people I didn’t know—my Instagram followers—who started calling me a photographer and encouraged me to pursue this project more seriously.
BSA:What do you feel you’re capturing in your photographs of New York — is it its people, geometry, pulse, or something more elusive?
Sonny Gall: What draws me in are all the things often associated with graffiti and street art—the play of colors, architectural contrasts, the diversity of people, and those small details that catch my eye on an aesthetic level. I tend to visualize compositions that I enjoy framing and coming back to later.
BSA:How do graffiti and street culture weave into the moments you frame — are they a backdrop, a rhythm, or a conversation within your images?
Sonny Gall: Graffiti and street art are what primarily capture my attention. I love framing them within the urban context of the city. They’ve become a defining element of my work, giving my photos rhythm, identity, and a distinctive character.
BSA:When did this project first take shape for you, and in what ways has your vision of the city evolved since then?
Sonny Gall:99 of NY was conceived in 2013 but stayed on hold for several years. Life happened, but the idea never left me. With the encouragement of friends and family, I realized I needed someone to help bring it to life. That’s when I reached out to my friend Mila Tenaglia, in 2021, during Covid. We had both moved from Italy to New York around the same time, sharing similar experiences and a deep love for the city. I immediately knew she would be the perfect partner—our visions aligned naturally. With her structured writing and my photography, we created something beyond a book: a visual and emotional portrait of a transforming New York—our New York—rapidly reshaped by gentrification.
BSA: If someone could not see these images, what would you want them to understand about them through your words?
Mila Tenaglia: I’d want the writing to pull readers straight into that chaotic, creative spiral that is New York — a city of bombed-out corners, tags, graffiti, and gestures that still breathe in the semi-illegality of pure expression. Every mark on a wall is an act of self-definition: it demands nothing, yet it insists on being seen. I hope that pulse — the urgency, the defiance, the raw emotion — can be felt even without the images, carried only by the words.
BSA: The city is chaotic and unpredictable — how do you capture its essence in language?
Mila Tenaglia: That’s a beautiful question — one I ask myself all the time. My life and my work, built around culture, people, and documentary storytelling, keep me on the streets every day. I live and work within the pulse of the city. After so many years here — in a place I can finally call home — I think I’ve absorbed something of its rhythm. Like a painter with a brush, I’ve tried to translate that rhythm into language, to turn what I see and live into words that still breathe New York’s restlessness.
99 of NY by Sonny Gall. Written by Mila Tenaglia. King Koala Press. Italy 2025
BSA: Whose words or voices have most inspired your own?
Mila Tenaglia: I’ve always been drawn to voices that carry both fire and fragility — writers who turn experience into resistance. Oriana Fallaci, with her fearless confrontation of power, taught me that truth has a pulse and a price. Patti Smith showed me how poetry can be lived — raw, unfiltered, born from the noise of the streets. Joan Didion taught me the precision of silence, how restraint can be as powerful as rebellion. And Rebecca Solnit, with her wandering intellect, reminds me that thinking and walking are the same act — a way of mapping the world through attention. Together, they form a kind of compass: their words move through chaos with grace, and that’s what I try to do too — to find beauty without erasing the struggle. There are many other names I could mention, but right now I feel like highlighting these voices in particular.
Aerosol, Avignon, astronauts, and an ornery ornithologist under the U-Bahn feeding hundreds of pigeons, making threats toward a visiting photojournalist about revealing her identity — it’s all part of a typical sunny fall survey of Berlin as we track the streets under the U3 from Urban Spree to Urban Nation on foot. It’s a hike, but why not? You’ve got to burn off last night’s Schultheiss beers that add to your girth and your bleary, sun-streaked view of the streets. Keep your eyes darting across surfaces and you’re rewarded in this city: stickers, tags, stencils of owls and cats, and Haring and Frida, impossible Berlin Kidz pieces sliding down walls from high altitudes, and 1UP tags in nearly every possible — and impossible — location.
Closer to Nollendorfplatz station, the formal murals from UN mix with a kaleidoscope of local spray — a lively conversation about fame, the environment, politics, gentrification, fear, love, and the many Paradoxes of life (see what we did there?).. Alive and kicking, shall we say, in Berlin. Next stop; Prague.
This week’s interview with the streets includes: 1Up Crew, Berlin Kidz, Cartonneros, Dylan Mitro, Erka, Kranz, Media’s, Paradox, Phoebe Graphy, Push X, The London Police, Unplatonic, and Victor Ash.
Canadian artist Dylan Mitro collaborated with residents of the so-called “Omabunker”—a senior apartment building near URBAN NATION in Berlin—to create the community wall project “Love Letter from the Omabunker.” During his Martha Cooper Fellowship, Mitro invited the folks who live there to photograph one another and their surroundings, turning everyday snapshots into large black-and-white portraits now covering the building’s façade.
The project reflects Martha Cooper’s documentary spirit—finding beauty and dignity in ordinary lives—while reworking it into a collective, site-specific gesture. Here, the street becomes both subject and canvas: the photographers and the photographed are the same people, turning their home into an image of itself and making visible a community that often may be unseen.
This year Graffitea 2025marked its tenth anniversary in the small Valencian town of Cheste, about 30 kilometers west of Valencia, with a new edition that reaffirmed its role as one of Spain’s most significant public art projects. Over the course of a decade, the festival has transformed this municipality, with more than 160 murals now lining its streets. The project, featuring new works by artists from Spain and around the world, is promoted by the Department of Culture of the City Council of Cheste. In communication with the community, Graffitea is both a municipal initiative and a collaborative cultural endeavor, officially sustained by a belief that mural art enriches public space and social consciousness alike.
Under the artistic direction of Toni Espinar, who also oversees its on-the-ground organization, Graffitea aims to balance curatorial vision with community participation. The festival was originally initiated in 2016 by Mª Ángeles Llorente, councillor for culture at the time, what began as a small-town experiment in civic art has become a national reference point for how local governments can embrace urban creativity as a driver of education, tourism, and pride..
The 2025 edition of Graffitea is distinguished by an eco-feminist theme, featuring 13 women muralists including Btoy, Fio Silva, Roseta FS, Anna Repullo, Hera Herakut, Margot Margay, Maríadie, Raquel Coba, Ana Corazón, Hélène Planquelle, Daniela Guerreiro, Lluïsa Penella i Pons, and Alicia Jordá de Lucas. Their walls touch on themes of care, love, memory, and respect for nature. Alongside these, projects like Graffitea con Palestina — co-organized with UNRWA — underscore the festival’s international outlook and solidarity with human rights causes. Such collaborations expand the festival’s social scope beyond visual spectacle, anchoring it in sometimes difficult conversations about themes such as gender, ecology, war, and justice.
According to the Comunitat Valenciana’s official tourism portal, Graffitea’s annual program includes conferences, round tables, screenings, practical workshops, and guided routes — a format that seeks to connect artists with audiences. Over the years, related events have also included concerts, hip-hop performances, and mural scholarships, weaving together art, education, and local participation. After a decade and 160 murals, Graffitea flexes the power of contemporary urban art and the enduring capacity of communities to welcome artists as partners in shaping the public imagination.
Our thanks to photographer Louis Olive Bulbenna for sharing these recent photos that he took with BSA readers.
Street art functions best when it is a witness, not only a declaration. “I was here, I am here” is the simplified version, and often there are clues that tell you so much more.
In the case of New York’s Appleton, that voice speaks of more than presence: it traces a life lived, marked by survival, activism, and visual urgency.
This week he returns to Chelsea with his new solo exhibition—A New Hero Emerges—to be held at Sims Contemporary, 509 W 23rd St (10th Ave), New York City, opening Thursday, November 6, 2025.
Appleton (image courtesy of the artist)
Artist, activist & speaker, he’s been developing a compelling body of work on the street over the last decade or so – with the goal of raising awareness of type 1 diabetes, which he is directly affected by. With street art, painting, photography, and sculpture, his lived experience becomes the substrate of his art: the insulin vials, the syringes, the shoes of children, the climb of street-wheatpastes from New York’s High Line to alleyways abroad.
In the new show, his metaphorical reach expands. A New Hero Emerges draws on the iconography of the Tin Man from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz—that winning figure of armor, of missing heart, of longing—as a symbol of perseverance, courage, and compassion. Although we know that Oz didn’t give anything to the Tin Man that he didn’t already have – in this example, a heart. Appleton’s motto may well be: “Oil to the Tin Man is insulin to the diabetic.” It’s street-art poetics meeting personal reality.
Over the years, Appleton has taken his message across U.S. cities and continents: gallery shows from New York to Los Angeles, Miami to San Francisco; street-walls from Busan to Barcelona, London to Lisbon, Bangkok to Berlin. His past solo exhibitions include Out of the Cold (NYC, 2016), Too Young for Type One (LA, 2017), and Too Young for Type One II (NYC, 2019). His role extends beyond the wall: he is Artist-in-Residence and speaker with $dedoc #dedocvoices, sharing in major diabetes-/health-conferences (e.g., Madrid #EASD60, Lisbon #ISPAD50, Bangkok #ADA85th).
As part of the street-art community, he uses the anonymity of the city to amplify a deeply personal voice. The “tag” Appleton is, in fact, his grandmother’s maiden name and his middle name—an intentional reclaiming of identity.
Approaching the opening of A New Hero Emerges, we spoke with Appleton thinking about his practice, empathy of strangers, survival in the city, street art presence and gallery fame.
Brooklyn Street Art: What is the message you are sending out to the world?
Appleton: That we are all one. That we are all in this together. In this daily struggle & hope for a cure.
Diabetes can really be… Forgive me, a fucking nightmare that a lot of people hide the difficulties even from their closest friends.
BSA: What is the response, if any, you’d like to receive from the public?
Appleton: A wide range of responses people describe my work as inspiring, thought-provoking, and moving.
Others are disturbing, even cynical.
I went into a coma at six years old and almost died.
An older sister died before I was born of unrecognized diabetes.
In one of my Street pieces, it says Diabetes coming to a child near you and someone wrote over a day later, “a child sees this.”
I cleaned it up and wrote back I hope so I knew what Diabetes was at when I was six so should every six year old talk to eat better and be aware of conditions that they might not recognize.
I went into a coma from unrecognized diabetes, and it still happens today.
Diabetes masquerading as the common cold as something else, and even in today’s age, doctors still miss it.
That’s pretty much my mission in a nutshell as an artist and a person with decades of lived diabetic experience.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
