When you look at the corporate yellow journalism flashing across screens today, the shallow and sensational rhetoric may lead you to believe we are devolving as a race. In fact it is just the opposite in many quarters, so media literacy is more important now than ever to discern who is propagating this narrative, and to what ends?
Alfredo Segatori and Pablo Machioli (photo © Matt Fox-Tucker/BA Street Art)
Certainly many cultural observers deduct that man and woman have not progressed since prehistory and a new Baltimore mural by Street Artists Alfredo Segatori (Argentina) and Pablo Machioli (Uruguay) is a throw-back to our less-evolved selves. “I believe that cavemen still exist today and this mural is a like a mirror to look back at our roots,” says Segatori about the singular ‘Homo Naledi’ figure whose bones were discovered by anthropologists in South Africa in 2015 “We need to decide what future we want for our kids and if we want to move forward as a human race.”
The mural is part of a larger initiative including more than 20 street artists participating in a two continent cultural exchange between Baltimore and Buenos Aires, an outside component of a gallery show entitled “Roots”. The show is curated by Baltimores’ Richard Best of Section 1 Project and Matt Fox-Tucker of Buenos Aires Street Art along with local Gallery 788.
Alfredo Segatori and Pablo Machioli (photo © Matt Fox-Tucker/BA Street Art)
As Street Art and murals are continuing to bring more of the social and political themes to the streets in cities like Baltimore and Buenos Aires, traditional organizers of public art programming appear to be on the wane – perhaps because taxpayer funded initiatives have evaporated in most cities and more complex privately funded programs triangulate outcomes.
Actual grassroots organizers of programs like this, while still related to a gallery show, are more likely to respect intellectual rigor and are increasingly carving out their own curatorial niche. It is an interesting crack in the dialogue in public space where the final artworks often respond to society in more challenging ways, rather than producing only pleasing imagery and messages approved by committee or commercial interests.
Alfredo Segatori and Pablo Machioli (photo © Matt Fox-Tucker/BA Street Art)
For Segatori, this mural is a direct response to how we are behaving as a race – particularly toward one another. “I believe that in the world today there is still a lot of violence and intolerance so the idea of our mural is to show the reality of the society that we live in,” says Segatori of the new piece.
“There are people around us who are still forced to live in poverty, suffer from racism, discrimination and persecution due to the color of their skin.” Whether locals will take this message away from the mural is anyone’s guess, but the organizers of “Roots-Raices” say they hope to open the discussion between communities about how to assist in our collective evolution.
Alfredo Segatori and Pablo Machioli (photo © Matt Fox-Tucker/BA Street Art)
Alfredo Segatori and Pablo Machioli (photo © Matt Fox-Tucker/BA Street Art)
‘Roots’ brings together artworks by more than 20 street artists from Argentina and Baltimore exploring origins, cultural identities and social and racial history. Baltimore street artists who have created new artworks for the show include Gaia, Pablo Machioli, Paul Mericle, Billy Mode, Nether, Reed, Mas Paz, Ernest Shaw, Gregg Deal, Lee Nowell-Wilson and Toven plus photographs by Martha Cooper. Argentine artists represented are Alfredo Segatori are Nazza Stencil, El Marian, Luxor, Ice, Patxi Mazzoni Alonso, Maxi Bagnasco, Primo and Juan Zeballos.
Other Articles You May Like from BSA:
Many images this week are from our short visit to Querétaro, Mexico this week – where, among other things, we saw first hand many of the murals mounted by the festival Nueve Arte Urbano over the ...
“This one goes out to the whole LGBTQ community!” says Street Artist Remi Rough as he finishes his first of two brightly abstract and geometric installations here in NYC over the last couple of days....
“This mural contains the shapes of each one overlapped in layers and erasing lines to emphasize color, our great passion,” says Zosen of his new collaboration with artist Mina Hamada. The two have cr...
The revered Nuyorican poet Jesús "Tato" Laviera will be honored this weekend with a new mural by artist Don Rimx in Spanish Harlem/El Barrio in addition to the re-naming of 123rd Street after him. Wea...
As the weather turns warmer, activities on the streets become more fevered, energetic, free. Graffiti writers burst out of the doors to their apartments and houses with backpacks filled with marke...