“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”
– Cesar A. Cruz
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week!
The fog of war obscures our vision, confuses our thoughts, and stirs fear and anger within us. Yet, we must not yield to despair as we navigate these unpredictable times. Within each of us lies a creative spirit eager to emerge. Around us are those who yearn for love and aid. Street artists, with their unusual practice of blending of persuasion and provocation, offer entertainment, encouragement, and discomfort. In such times, the artist’s voice becomes crucial, including your voice.
Here is our weekly interview with the street: this week featuring Jeremy Fish, Angurria, Mike King, Spaint, Tom Bob NYC, Jay Kaes, Whitney Holbourn, Dream Weavin, Art of Slim, Keru De Kolorz, Menas 24711, Memi Martinez, Face, and Brian Wooden.
The New Year has been good so far, except if your country is in a war and is being pulverized.
We captured some exceptional street art during our visits to Miami last month. It’s encouraging to see that, despite commercial pressures, the artists’ untamed creative spirit continues to shine through. To balance the collection, we have dirty old New York pieces that pull no punches, and tell no truths, I mean lies. Happy to share these new and dynamic pieces with you.
Here is our weekly interview with the street: this week featuring Tats Cru. Homesick, Werds, Deih XLF, Melski, West, Dase, Banksy Hates Me, Wizard Skull, Johann Art, Arlex Campos, Professorx, d1a5, Salute, Urban Ruben, HITC, Heat, and Kane.
Brazil based Cranio has a quickly identifiable character – the cerulean blue native in traditional garb who feels entirely outside the modern consumerist world, even as he negotiates his way through it. According to the artist, the blue is a nod to his cultural heritage as an indigenous person from the Xingu region of Brazil. The blue figures in his work often appear to connect his personal history with broader social and political issues, particularly those regarding the marginalization and erasure of indigenous cultures.
Fabio de Oliveira Parnaiba began painting in the streets of Sao Paulo in the early 2000s and has since become known for his distinctive aesthetic and commentary on contemporary society delivered with humor and pathos. A school of illustration influences the overall style you may associate with other Brazillian street artists such as Os Gemeos – an adventure-seeking childlike superhero who is willing to play the game as soon as they can confidently discern what it is.
In many of Cranio’s works, his blue figures are placed within a modern, commercial world, surrounded by symbols of consumerism such as logos, billboards, shopping bags – and destruction. The traditional clothing and markings of the indigenous figures are not meant to be ironic but may strike you so as you realize the path to becoming a successful artist includes embracing the modern urban environment – even while commenting on how globalization and capitalism have impacted indigenous communities. Today Cranio’s work can be found in cities around the world, from Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo to Paris, London, and New York and in addition to his street art, he has also exhibited in galleries and museums and has collaborated with brands such as Adidas and Mini Cooper.
As we approach the end of International Women’s Day/Month, we share with you images from the protests that took place in Chihuahua, Mexico marking the day when women all over the world took to the streets to protest their oppressive, dangerous, unjust, and violent conditions in what could be all countries in the world.
A recent trip to Chihuahua City in Mexico regaled graffiti hunters with many amazing talents in the letter hand-styling department and several very talented local and national muralists scattered around the northern city of about one million inhabitants. It also paraded a long list of accused or convicted rapists, abusers, and those reported to be involved in sex crimes.
Remaining from a protest commemorating International Women’s Day here two years ago, these hand-sprayed names and accusations still mark the walls of abandoned buildings and even historical monuments. The graffiti appears to be aimed at raising awareness about the high levels of gender-based violence in Mexico and calling attention to the impunity that often allows perpetrators to go unpunished. The women who participated in the protest stated that they wanted to hold the perpetrators accountable for their actions and demand justice for their victims.
The fact that so many of these were sprayed is shocking to many locals, and the fact that they remain years afterward without being buffed is perhaps more impressive. These street scribes were visually yelling, demanding justice, and warning sex offenders that they would be held accountable for their actions. We took a number of shots while searching for more artful graffiti and street art, but we have to say that the emotional intensity of these writings and simple stencils here in public space was far more impactful in many ways than anything else by those creating for aesthetic purposes.
Rising above the sticky spray-painted chaos on the first story level of nearly everything else here in Wynwood, you’ll walk by and gaze upward at the newly finished panels of scientifically accurate butterflies by the French street artist Mantra. This is part two of a gig he got with a real estate firm that we caught the first part of just before the New Year. (Mantra Flies High in Wynwood, Miami)
We’ll be sharing some of the street’s visual cacophony with you in future postings, but for today let’s calm our minds to recover from the harsh conflicting messages of raw commerce crashing into the enormous income gaps and class ruptures everywhere else. These butterflies are expertly rendered, preserved for posterity, floating up from the fray – a stolen moment of tranquility that silences the jackhammers and beeping cash registers.
A bit of sérendipité, really, to be tooling around Wynwood in a holiday mindset and a rental car at the end of the year, and to look up to see Mantra on a cherry picker. We had just seen him in Brooklyn the month before and here he was again, painting freehand, as he does, with such precision and commitment, which he also does.
The painting is thoughtful, as you may expect, with each of the collection a butterfly that can be found in Miami, he tells us. Next month he will be in Mexico in the middle of millions of – you know what.
Keep going strong, Mantra.
Binomial name, from left to right, top to bottom :
1A Eurema d. daira ♂ 1B Eunica Tatila ♀ 1C Zerene Cesonia ♀ 1D Phoebis Philea ♀ 1E Limenitis arthemis astyanax ♀ 2A Papilio P. Palames ♂ 2B Hypolimnas Misippus ♂ 2C Siproeta Stelenes ♂ 3A Eurema d. daira ♀ 3B Eunica Tatila ♂ 3C Zerene Cesonia ♂ 3D Phoebis Sennae ♀ 3E Eumaeus Atala ♂
Worried that voting rights are being stolen from black and brown people in a systematic way across the country? Let Mitch McConnell put your fears to rest.
So here’s our weekly interview with the street in NYC and Miami, featuring Beautiful Mind, Bella Phame, BK Foxx, Claudia La Bianca, DAK PPP 907, Dek2DX, djaRodney, Gina Kiel, Gold Loxe, JJ Veronis, Lady JDay, Melski, Rumba Art, StyleOne, Tee Pop Art, and Tutto & Niente.
It was sunny that particular day in Wynwood, Miami in November of last year. The air was fresh and the humidity mercifully low. The sun rays weren’t piercing one’s shoulders. It was what winter in Miami is supposed to feel like. Dreamy.
That’s how we were feeling; dreamy – when we turned the corner and saw them. A motley crew of five or six men taking on a gargantuan wall in the less noisy part of Wynwood. The congenial 1UP Crew is the Berlin-based masters of the mixed message – here to vandalize, but politely. In this case of course the wall is completely legal, but associates of this notorious crew have been credited/blamed for leaving their marks on walls, trains, water tanks, elevators – anything that strikes their fancy in multiple cities across many continents.
The wall was still in progress that day with many more aerosol cans to go. We chatted, took photos, and reported on the encounter HERE. By the time we had to return to NYC, the wall wasn’t completed yet – so we returned to the winter paradise weeks later.
We were glad we pulled ourselves away from the ocean to see this in all its glory. Judging from the description below from one of the 1UP Crew members we think that this wall has it all.
“So it is kind of a movie planet, we don’t know which planet it is,” says one of the 1UP guys, “But it is a planet of the future – and there are all these Metro’s coming up out of the sand along with pyramids and street signs and figures… It’s growing now. I think that we have three more days to paint.”
Up to 13 artists joined in to complete it including members of 1UP Crew and members of the MSG Crew as well as Vlok, Giz, and Fuzi UV TPK crew from Paris.
Welcome the first BSA Images of the Week of 2022! How are you feeling? You’re looking great!
The street art parade marches on, perhaps ever clearer in its intent to reflect the mood, the zeitgeist, the intellectual meanderings of the artist class. In the process of demystifying the graffiti and street art scene over the few decades, we’ve long realized that there always will be surprises, no matter how much of the scene you have decoded. That’s what keeps it FREEEESSSSSSSSHHHH!
This week, as the snow is falling in dirty old NYC and as people are rescinding into their homes for another de facto Covid “lockdown”, we discover that artists are hard at work getting out their message, their id, their frustrations, their aspirations, their wit.
May this adventure never end, and may this trail never go cold.
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Adam Fujita, Anderson Bluu, Dorothy Gale, Ernesto Maranje, ERRE, Ethan Minsker, Fake Banksy, Gold Loxe, Ill Surge, J. Cole, Johann Art, Marka 27, Miss 17, NEST, Praxis VGZ, Salami Doggy, and Winsten Tseng .
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. The weather is tropical this weekend, like we’re expecting a hurricane – ominous and windy. Maybe its our ongoing fear of runaway inflation, which Fed Chair Jerome Powell is trying to make us forget he called ‘transitory’. That should be the word of 2021. Transitory. Like fanny packs worn diagonally across the chest, or Dua Lipa.
The city’s vaccination rate is 78, and the mayor is requiring more vaccine and mask mandates in private companies and schools. Let’s hope it works, brothers and sisters.
So here’s our regular interview with the street, this week including 4SomeCrew, Buff Monster, Calicho, DAK 907, DOT DOT DOT, Drecks, ERRE, MIDABI, Not Banksy, Paper Monster, Paul Richard, Praxis VGZ, Roachi, Swrve, Urban Ruben, and Zexor.
The street art can double as advertisements, the advertisements can double as street art, and all of it has been supplanted by fevered talk about NFTs, as if the speaker whom you’ve been accosted by invented them. For a scene that likes to consider itself to be on the bleeding edge, this is all a bit disappointingly 2017 to hear, but there you have it.
Yet we are still pleased to see that the neighborhood is popping with more fresh new creativity than last year and you again feel like new things are to be discovered around almost every corner. Oh sure, there are many cultural looters here, but that’s always been the case. It’s good to see that some new transgressive pieces, eye-opening missives, and dripping wet tags are scattered here among the permission-based walls and ghosts from December past. No one knows what the socio-economic future holds, but for now, Wynwood’s holding steady.
Here are a few shots from Jaime Rojo as he made a few laps among the streets.
Miami awakens from a Covid-19 stupor this year with a bonified Art Week, featuring associated fairs and events like Wynwood Walls that are activated by the Art Basel behemoth. Some of the high-profile organizers of yesteryear may be on the ropes this time but you are sure to see many of your favorite and familiar art dealers, drug dealers, street artists, graffiti writers, djs, taco sellers, and lucite stiletto slide-ons. Cold weather birds love to fly here for the art fairs and a quick suntan and a Pina Colada just after Thanksgiving every year – it’s equal parts breezily laid back and sketchy and only slightly hedonistic, the gritty-glam blocks of Wynwood know how to keep it real, unless it was silicone to start with.
We’ve heard some solid talents are going to be in the neighborhood, of their own volition or by invitation, as is usually the case. Wynwood Walls is offering 11 artists painting the outdoor space and the Brooklyn art duo Faile mounting a large indoor exhibition of new works that are sure to shock and thrill new fans and those who have watched them from street to museum in and elsewhere in between in their 22 years as visual alchemists. We’re also interviewing them live onstage at Wynwood Walls Wednesday December 1st at 7 pm. We’d love to see you there and talk with you so please stop by and say hello!
With a theme of “Agents of Change” Wynwood Walls is bringing AIKO (Japan), Diogo “Addfuel” Machado (Portugal), Bordalo ii (Portugal), David Flores (United States), Scott Froschauer (United States), Joe Iurato (United States), KAI (United States), Kayla Mahaffey (United States), Mantra (France), Ernesto Maranje (Cuba), Greg Mike (United States), Farid Rueda (Mexico), and for the first time, Wynwood Walls will open one wall to a local artist in an “Open Call” competition.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
