Graffiti history and contemporary creativity merge this summer during the inaugural run of the Nice Surprise street art festival in the Norwegian city of Stavanger. Join BSA as we celebrate the city’s 900-year milestone with a new cadre of artists and programming that continues the modern heritage of this city on the North Sea with a season of new street art and graffiti.

“go on baby… burn a while”

Born in 1983, Tamara Alves is a Portuguese visual artist and illustrator based in Lisbon. Holding a degree in Arts from ESAD-IPL and a master’s in Contemporary Artistic Practices from FBAUP, she considers her figurative work as a form of activism in the streets.

Here in Stavanger, for the Nice Surprise festival, she creates a monochromatic scene enlivened by a burning car – an object she has used before to symbolize love, a relationship, a mutilating crash of the heart. The body is engulfed in flames while the figure stares at it dispassionately, possibly with red-rimmed eyes. Alves gives this mural the name “go on baby… burn a while”.

Her artwork weaves a visceral narrative, celebrating the raw, primal vitality of intense emotions and the transformation of connections. Through interactions between human and animal figures and natural landscapes, her universe embodies love in its rawest form – intertwined with wounds, pain, tears, but also pleasure, joy, and ecstasy. At times, her visual soliloquies resemble wildflowers thriving in the wilderness.

Since the early 2000s, Tamara Alves has participated in numerous projects, group and solo exhibitions, and impactful street art interventions. Her unmistakable presence has established her as one of Portugal’s most notable street artists, and her schedule of mural painting is seemingly overflowing.

238

138

45