Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. Sofles / Kawaii. The artist paints a piece for his daughter Violet. 2. ACBR and ZONE take Rick and Morty Underground 3. Honet x Art Azoi in Paris
BSA Special Feature: Sofles / Kawaii. The artist paints a piece for his daughter Violet.
Remember when Nirvana did that concert without electric guitars? You can call this one “Sofles Unplugged.” He has no soundtrack revving up your adrenaline or accentuating his skills. He’s just pure skillz.
Sofles / Kawaii. The artist paints a piece for his daughter Violet.
ACBR and ZONE take Rick and Morty Underground.
Ahhh, here we go! Vandals, surreptitious underground graffiti pieces, knives, mad scientists, syncopated dance numbers, and a ripping soundtrack. Back to what we all expected from our graff videos.
Honet x Art Azoi in Paris
A creation by HONET on the wall of the Pavillon Carré de Baudouin (Paris 20th district).
Barcelona-based KENOR has traveled around the world and worked with brands creating his own take on kinetic graffiti, whether on walls, on canvas, or as sculpture. Blowing air into his pieces of colorful geometric confetti, the painter catches the chaos of the city and paints it.
It’s a mismatched style that recalls the Memphis movement of the 80s, complete with a poppy palette and occasional patterning. Here with Art Azoi on a lower wall of Parc de Bellville in Paris, you can see how his emphasis on movement drives his creative choices at Place Alphonse Allais.
KENOR in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris. (photo courtesy of Art Azoï)KENOR in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris. (photo courtesy of Art Azoï)KENOR in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris. (photo courtesy of Art Azoï)KENOR in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris. (photo courtesy of Art Azoï)
Parisian OG Lek has been working on the streets for the last three of his five decades, growing up close to the Mecca of European graffiti in the 1980s, Stalingrad. By the 90s he was ready to experiment with abstract and futuristic, with a balancing influence from the rigid uncompromising Bauhaus. Today he easily contemplates the illegal and legal, commissioned and commercial, and his compositions are not always easily categorized as graffiti, street art, or mural.
But he is easily called a pioneer among peers, having been one half of Lek and Sowat, as well as a member of Da Mental Vaporz, French Kiss, LCA, GNS, RAW, and 1984. Here we present a brand new gig he scored with Art Azoï last month in his hometown.
LEK in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris. (photo courtesy of Art Azoï)LEK in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris. (photo courtesy of Art Azoï)LEK in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris. (photo courtesy of Art Azoï)LEK in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris. (photo courtesy of Art Azoï)LEK in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris. (photo courtesy of Art Azoï)
Calligraphist and decorative painter Tarek Benaoum has Algeria, Italy, and French in his blood, but it’s all gold when he writes across walls. A graffiti writer who studied script formally in his early twenties, his hybrid of Arabic and gothic takes him from wall to canvas in both hemispheres.
At the request of the Parisian public housing agency Régie Immobilière de la Ville (RIVP), Art Azoï conjured a solution to rehabilitate this massive structure with a mural that would resonate with the locality and its residents. The Salé-born Benaoum rose to the challenge with a 40 x 15 meter mural in his signature blue and gold on the south gable of this building on the boulevard Mortier in the 20th arrondissement.
Standing at the outer rim of these circular motifs are texts by the Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti from his 1969 book Freedom from the Known (Se libérer du connu), a treatise on the only worthwhile revolution: inner liberation.
Among the famous quotes often remembered from the book is this one, “To be free of all authority, of your own and that of another, is to die to everything of yesterday, so that your mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, full of vigor and passion.”
“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 created many color-blocked organic and chaotic visual feasts on walls around the world over the last few years, and this one puts an optimistic face on the new year in Paris.
Zosen & Mina Hamada in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris, France. (Photo courtesy of Art Azoï)
In fact, the painting pair haven’t been able to do a large scale mural like this since late 2019 in Japan, where Mina hails from. “After more than a year, pandemic and confinement in between, we wanted to do something different and fresh to have fun.”
Zosen & Mina Hamada in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris, France. (Photo courtesy of Art Azoï)
In coordination with L’association Art Azoï and Les Plateaux Sauvages in the 20th arrondissement, the Barcelona-based pair were bundled up and on cherry pickers in the early January cold weather, tracing out their long-pole lines over the top of one another. “For this mural, we prepared two different designs,” says Mina. “Then we mixed over the lines to make the mural.”
Zosen & Mina Hamada in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris, France. (Photo courtesy of Art Azoï)Zosen & Mina Hamada in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris, France. (Photo courtesy of Art Azoï)Zosen & Mina Hamada in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris, France. (Photo courtesy of Art Azoï)
Imagine being forbidden, proscribed by religious law. Haram.
Yemeni artist Ahlam Jarban says that she felt that her very existence as a girl and a woman growing up in her country was forbidden. Now imagine being a female graffiti writer in that war-torn country, eager for your work and your ideas to be seen and considered.
“To be a woman in Yemen is forbidden (haram),” she says. “Street art was my way in Yemen to say ‘I’m not haram; I’m proud of being a woman.’ ”
The Haram wall: Ahlam Jarban in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris, France. (Photo courtesy of Art Azoï)
Her new mural was created in collaboration with the Agency of Artists in Exile (Atelier des Artistes en Exil), where she is an artist in residence. Using aerosol and stencils, she draws attention to this denial of personal agency in the world through patterned calligraphy of “Haram” interrupted by the occasional pair of photorealistic eyes, always watching.
Ahlam Jarban in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris, France. (Photo courtesy of Art Azoï)
Part of an exhibition along a 50-meter long wall at the Pavillon Carré de Baudouin in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, the artist is actively assessing and critiquing the patriarchal behaviors she witnessed during her youth before arriving here in 2018. She is also making connections between the two cultures.
Getting up in earlier days. Ahlam Jarban (courtesy Agency of Artists in Exile – Atelier des Artistes en Exil)
“I painted eyes because I think that was the only thing that was free on a woman’s body,” she says as she describes the various emotions and intentions that are communicated by people purely with their eyes. Immediately she pivots to the correlation to life in her new European home where everyone is encouraged to wear a mask during the Covid-19 pandemic, and people are learning to rely more on communicating with their eyes, perhaps more than ever before.
“I think this mural can be very interesting for the Arabic French people and for the French people to know more about how it can be to be a female in Yemen,” she says in the video below.
Ahlam Jarban in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris, France. (Photo courtesy of Art Azoï)Ahlam Jarban in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris, France. (Photo courtesy of Art Azoï)Ahlam Jarban in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris, France. (Photo courtesy of Art Azoï)
Ahlam Jarban in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris, France. (Photo courtesy of Art Azoï)Ahlam Jarban in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris, France. (Photo courtesy of Art Azoï)Ahlam Jarban in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris, France. (Photo courtesy of Art Azoï)
Graffiti artist Djalouz’s wildstyle 3-D shards look like multi-tentacled sea monsters climbing up walls, wrapping around telephone booths, creeping down stairwells and spreading across floors. By themselves, these interlocking forms can be biomorphic and menacing. Coupled with expressive paint-splattered hands releasing a Dove of Peace the effect is quite something else entirely.
For his new wall with public art programmers Art Azoï the Parisian delves into his aspirations for peace, perhaps in reaction to the terrorism horrors that have occurred in parts of Europe over the last year. He may also have been inspired by the location here on the terrace of the Ken Saro Wiwa Center, so named for the Nigerian writer, television producer and environmental activist whom Shell Oil was found complicit in the murder of.
Curator Alex Parrish tells us that the messages of peace here are a bit buried beneath the very obvious symbolism. “Beneath the layers of paint on the hand and the dove are clever phrases (more so a play on words) that relate to its title, such as ‘j’aime pas les confli’ (I don’t like conflict) and ‘amis pas haine me’ (friends not hate),” she tells us.
The Paris based cultural project named Art Azoï brings emerging and established Street Artists and contemporary artists to develop mural ideas on public walls – and has been doing it for about five years. They have a few programs of permanent and rotating murals and endeavor to initiate exhibitions and workshops for the artists to more closely interact with the community in the area of Paris that they operate in.
Today we have a look at three new artist installations that are facilitated by Art Azoï. Our special thanks to photographer Alex Parrish for sharing images from this project with BSA readers
First we see that Kashink was on the terrace of the “centre d’animation Ken Saro Wiwa” with one of her signature poppy four-eyed monsters with a feminine prowess. Yo, “protect ya neck!”
Swiz brought his geometry to this long wall located on the busy rue de Ménilmontant, a wall that has been previously hit by Sunset, RERO, Ella&Pitr and Augustine Kofie.
Stesi was invited to begin the 2016 program in January with his piece on the 40 meter long surface along Rue des Pyrénées, located in the 20th arrondisement. He uses his signature abstract style and stippling spray technique that recalls some graffiti letter forms as well as more organic ones.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
