Super Walls 2021 says that the theme of this year’s festival is “Rebirth” – which is in alignment with the mission of the public art project, bringing new life to Veneto, Italy with 38 urban artists of all stripes.

Street artist Mr. Fijodor selected this image of a burning cigarette on the ICS Briosco middle school sidewall to illustrate a larger theme and point to a culprit of the modern age: thoughtless, toxic consumerism.

“The cigarette is the iconography of a ritual gesture that many people perform daily, sometimes without even realizing it,” he says of the white and black burning column stained with yellow nicotine. “A practice dictated by a physical as much as unconscious addiction.”

The larger theme is portrayed in a horror of bodies, animals, plants and objects all being consumed mindlessly. In pursuit, you may ask, of what?

He calls the work “Consumerism Consumes Us.” Indeed during the fires that rage across our lands in summers that stretch further into the year, one may sense that this way of life is going up in smoke.

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