All posts tagged: Barcelona

BSA Film Friday: 05.12.17

BSA Film Friday: 05.12.17

bsa-film-friday-JAN-2015

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :
1. Calligraphy, Layers and Screen Play; Said Dokins / Ugly Food House
2. Paolo Troilo: The London Afternoon
3. Elisa Capdevila & Ivan Floro for 12 + 1.
4. Jason Woodside and Ian Ross at Nashville Walls Project.
5.  The Infinite Now – Armand Dijcks

bsa-film-friday-special-feature

BSA Special Feature: Calligraphy, Layers and Screen Play; Said Dokins / Ugly Food House

Happy Friday. Time for fun in the studio together.

A snappy glitch-flecked soundtrack lifts and carries this black and white series of brushstrokes, screen sprays, and inky dance steps as layers of calligraphy, automatic pens, Luthis pens, Japanese brushes and a nattering of nibs stack up and slide. Street Artist/fine artist Said Dokins is with the Master Printer of Ugly Food House, Ivonne Adel-Buereos, and the sunset is the theme that inspires all of this activity.

With the world in motion, it is an atmosphere that we desperately try to capture, to somehow document that inspirational moment. Perhaps its not in the activity, but the shared sense of possibility unleashed through play and collaboration.

 

Paolo Troilo: The London Afternoon

Let your multiple brushes at home? No worries, you can use your fingers. Return to your senses, your ability to create gestural motion upon a canvas, the tactile interaction with the world you first learned. Paolo Troilo is clearly inspired by the same beauty and makes a performance of it through the front window.

 

Elisa Capdevila & Ivan Floro for 12 + 1. Contorno Urbano

For the 12 + 1 Project Elisa Capdevilla + Ivan Floro turn this grande dame to the side in Barcelona, an introduction of classical into everyday, for everyone.

 

Jason Woodside and Ian Ross at Nashville Walls Project.

Tough to draw the correlation stylistically between Jason Woodside and Ian Ross but Those Drones/Brian Siskind places them in a series of adoring sweeps of Nashville and it’s real estate, backed by a glowing modern reassuring nostalgia.

 

 

…And a quickie of Jason Woodside’s completed piece via Nashville Walls Project

A focused and glad review of the explosion of color and pattern that Jason Woodside plays for the business improvement district in Nashville.

 

The Infinite Now – Armand Dijcks

Not so much palette cleansing as mind-blowing, awe-inspiring oceanscapes created as cinemagraphs that basically leave you speechless.

Armand Dijcks worked with Australian photographer Ray Collins to set these into infinite motion, surrounded and regaled with music by André Heuvelman from the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra along with pianist Jeroen van Vliet.

May we all be inspired and run out to the world to create the positive change we need to have.

The Infinite Now from Armand Dijcks on Vimeo.

Read more
“GO GO GO” BYG in Spain for 12+1 Project

“GO GO GO” BYG in Spain for 12+1 Project

Maybe it’s because we just saw Mark Mothersbaugh interviewed live onstage at NYU by Carlo McCormick, but when we saw this mechanically growing text it reminded us of DEVO and Kraftwerk and possibly Dadaist collage. And Russian Constructivists and the Bauhaus.

BYG. GO, GO, GO. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

Ding Ding Ding! We knew if we kept guessing we were bound to get it right, right? Patricia and Luis, of the art collective BYG, tell us that their new piece for the 12 + 1 project ”is a tribute that BYG wants to do to Rodchenko and Russian Constructivism.” Made with paper and plastic paint on a wall in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, the renowned illustrators are passionate about collage and have done a number of street interventions using the technique, as well as legally in spanish art festivals like Asalto in Zaragoza, Open Walls in Barcelona or Poliniza in Valencia.

The constructed environment becomes the norm through repetition, so it is refreshing, sometimes jarringly so, to see deconstruction. Says BYG about their new wall,”Collage is what unites and what separates, it is the encounter, the surprise, it is to subvert and decontextualize, it is discovery.” Go Go Go!

BYG. GO, GO, GO. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

BYG. GO, GO, GO. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

BYG. GO, GO, GO. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

Read more
BSA Film Friday 04.28.17

BSA Film Friday 04.28.17

bsa-film-friday-JAN-2015

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :
1. Colouring The World. A Film By Okuda San Miguel
2. Borondo “Golden Gate”
3. Elbi Elem in Barcelona for 12+1 P
4. Chip Thomas in Santa Fe, New Mexico at Biocultura

bsa-film-friday-special-feature

BSA Special Feature: Colouring The World. A Film By Okuda San Miguel

The pleasing and bright geometry of Okuda has wide appeal to many audiences and he maximizes the effect with his choice of amiable animals and friendly themes. It’s a worldwide dance party for this artist and last year he took his public and commercial murals to many cities in places like Australia, Tahiti, and Thailand. And Miami, naturally.

Borondo “Golden Gate”

Dude, I told you – turn your phone so it’s landscape when you are doing video!

Just kidding. Here’s a video installation from a group show in March 2017 called COLERA in Rome’s Galleria Varsi.

Made as a stop action animation of a house on fire by Matteo Beradone with music by Enzo Pietropaoli. The multiple monotype prints by the Street Artist/Fine Artist Borondo are moving and crackling, inflected with gold leaf shadings, each different and evocative of the rapid flickering of fire, drowning in a reflective sea.

The group show also included Run, Canemorto and Michele Servadio during a two week residency at the gallery. You can see how the images were displayed in the photo from Borondo below the video

 

Elbi Elem in Barcelona for 12+1 Project

Here’s a process video of artist Elbi Elem at work on her mural for the 12+1 Project in Barcelona this spring.

To quote ourselves: ” ‘Break with the rectangle as the space to intervened,’ says artist Elbi Elem, the March painter for this wall curated monthly in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Spain. The abstract muralist says she began making kinetic sculpture in 2002 and has an interest in movement, composition and form.”

 

Chip Thomas in Santa Fe, New Mexico at Biocultura

Chip Thomas is a master at wheatpasting his large scale photographs, and has been doing this kind of art for many years now, usually with a genuine social mission and without great fanfare. This project is with Social Media Workgroup on the side of the Biocultura event space in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Read more
Anna Maga for “12 + 1” Project In Barcelona

Anna Maga for “12 + 1” Project In Barcelona

Saturday is a good day to get into your own creative projects and try stuff that you don’t have time to do usually. We always like to walk past the local walls to see what people are creating. Checking in on this community wall in Sant Feliu de Llobregat to see what’s going up in the neighborhood, we find this is the new intervention from Anna Maga at Kaligrafics.

Anna Maga at Kaligrafics. La Noche. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Alex Miró)

A fan of graffiti jams, roller skating and figurative painting, Maga Anna is a local illustrator, mural painter, children’s educator, and commercial designer. The project is a part of a community wall initiative by Contorno Urbano in Barcelona called “12 x 1”. Have a look. Where are your paints?

Anna Maga at Kaligrafics. La Noche. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Alex Miró)

Anna Maga at Kaligrafics. La Noche. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Alex Miró)

Anna Maga at Kaligrafics. La Noche. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Alex Miró)

Read more
Grandpa Gives Thumbs Down : EDJINN for 12 + 1 Project In Barcelona

Grandpa Gives Thumbs Down : EDJINN for 12 + 1 Project In Barcelona

Grandpa is giving you the thumbs down.

Street Artist EDJINN from Barcelona just created this wall that clearly expresses it’s dislike for so-called Social media and “community engagement”.

EDJINN. Dislike. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

“I want to contrast old people with new technologies, social networks and the new ways to interact that young people use, and the disconnection it might be for older people,” he says of the satiric illustration he’s created for the 12+1 project in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat.

Who can argue with this? We spend our days looking at phones, not each other – more concerned with the opinions and ideas expressed by total strangers that we call “friends.” Meanwhile the lady standing next to you brought your mother into the world and you are too busy “liking” and emoticon-ing to notice her.

Dislike.

EDJINN. Dislike. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

EDJINN. Dislike. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

Read more
“The Intimacy Project” Gets Close to the Artist with Fer Alcala

“The Intimacy Project” Gets Close to the Artist with Fer Alcala

“…the real heroes are the people noticing things, paying attention.”

~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

Twee Muizen. Nau Bostik, Barcelona. (photo © Fer Alcalá. OlympusE510)

Somewhere between celebrity and anonymity sits the Street Artist, depending on their wishes and fortune. We always feel lucky to see the artwork first anonymously on the street, because it needs to stand for itself, free of the passerby’s association with their knowledge of its author. Later, when you are in the presence of the artist with their work, the relationship you have with it is permanently altered. If you have established some trust, you also can learn so much about an artists relationship with the physicality of their process of art-making; the posture, the breathing, the gesture, the distance.

Photographer Fernando Alcalá Losa has made it a focus of his own art practice to notice the small and the great aspects of the artist’s process and captures important details that allow the viewer to understand the dynamics and relationship between an artist and their creation. In December on BSA he wrote,

“It’s about being there, right there, feeling the energy of creation. It’s about intimacy, about detail, about the personal connection with the artist, because you were able to be that close. And not everyone can be that close, that’s for sure…

I’m grateful for having the chance of living these moments of proximity, knowing that those artists that you’re shooting at trust you and allow you to be there, right there.”

Ulises Mendicutty. Us Festival 2016. Barcelona. (photo © Fer Alcalá. OlympusE510)

Today on BSA we’re pleased to present a very rare collection of Fernando’s images that tell just these stories, these primary relationships that are in alignment with the life of a creator; a struggle, a dance, a wandering journey of discovery, a spirited production, an execution of plan. All of these aspects and more can be seen, and sometimes captured by the artist behind the lens.


“The Intimacy Project”

Fernando Alcalá Losa

Some weeks ago, I read a post from someone on Facebook saying that the figure of the artist wasn’t important, saying that the piece was the only relevant thing in fact.

It sounded funny to me because there’s no artwork without the artist, but I understand what was meant, although I disagree from a photographic point of view. “The Intimacy Project” is an idea that has been in my head for some time and it has been developing in parallel with my evolution as a Street Art photographer.

Yoshi Sislay. Us Festival 2016. Barcelona. (photo © Fer Alcalá. OlympusE510)

When I started to interact with artists, I was kind of obsessed about keeping the distance, physically speaking, and about not disturbing the artist. As time went by, I began getting closer to everything; not only to the wall, but also to the person who paints the wall. I became more confident, always trying to be respectful and operating from my best intentions – and I continue doing this today.

“The Intimacy Project” is about the person behind the artist, about the human side of the creative process and about what happens from a close up view while a piece of art is being produced.

It’s about gestures, expressions, obsessions and techniques. Because the artwork, the final result, is important, but the human being who creates it is also important for me…indeed…

Margalef. Us Festival 2016. Barcelona. (photo © Fer Alcalá. OlympusE510)

Irene Lopez. Us Festival 2016. Barcelona. (photo © Fer Alcalá. OlympusE510)

Nuno Gomes. Us Festival 2016. Barcelona. (photo © Fer Alcalá. OlympusE510)

Roc Blackblock. Madrid, 2017 (photo © Fer Alcalá, FujifilmXT10)

Conse. Barcelona, 2017 (photo © Fer Alcalá, FujifilmXT10)

Smates. Barcelona, 2017 (photo © Fer Alcalá, FujifilmXT10)

Roc Blackblock. Madrid, 2017 (photo © Fer Alcalá, FujifilmXT10)

Roc Blackblock. Madrid, 2017 (photo © Fer Alcalá, FujifilmXT10)

Smates. Barcelona, 2017 (photo © Fer Alcalá, FujifilmXT10)

Berol. Barcelona, 2017 (photo © Fer Alcalá, FujifilmXT10)

Berol. Barcelona, 2017 (photo © Fer Alcalá, FujifilmXT10)

SAV45. Lloret Del Mar, 2017 (photo © Fer Alcalá, FujifilmXT10)

Elbi Elem. Contorno Urbano 2017. L’Hospitalet De Llobregat (photo © Fer Alcalá, FujifilmXT10)

Elbi Elem. Contorno Urbano 2017. L’Hospitalet De Llobregat (photo © Fer Alcalá, FujifilmXT10)

Shana. ContornoUrbano 2017. L’Hospitalet De Llobregat (photo © Fer Alcalá, FujifilmXT10)

Shana. ContornoUrbano 2017. L’Hospitalet De Llobregat (photo © Fer Alcalá, FujifilmXT10)

 

Ivana Flores. Base Elements Gallery. Barcelona. (photo © Fer Alcalá OlympusE510)

Miss Van. Fem Rimes, Fem Graff-2016. Barcelona. (photo © Fer Alcalá iPhone 6)

Cinta Vidal. Contorno Urbano 2016. L’Hospitalet De Llobregat (photo © Fer Alcalá, OlympusE510)

Cinta Vidal. Contorno Urbano 2016. L’Hospitalet De Llobregat (photo © Fer Alcalá, OlympusE510)

Reskate Studio. Contorno Urbano 2016. L’Hospitalet De Llobregat (photo © Fer Alcalá, OlympusE510)

Fasim. Open Walls Conference 2016. Barcelona. (photo © Fer Alcalá OlympusE510)

She One. Open Walls Conference 2016. Barcelona. (photo © Fer Alcalá OlympusE510)


“The Intimacy Project”

  • Took place over the course of one year

  • Three different tools used: Iphone, OlympusE510, FujifilmXT10

  • Scenarios: Openwalls Conference 2016, Ús Festival 2016, Contorno Urbano 2016 / 2017, La Arnau Gallery, Fem Rimes, Fem Graff 2016, Nau Bostik, Wallspot


 

 

 

Read more
BSA Images Of The Week: 03.19.17

BSA Images Of The Week: 03.19.17

BSA-Images-Week-Jan2015

Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring: Baron Von Fancy, City Kitty, Claudio Dre, Consumer Art, Ethan Armen, Humenbote, Jerk Face, Mr. Sis, Pantonio, Paola Delfin, Paris Sketch Culture, Peter Tunney, Sac Six, Thomas Allen, Tictail, and Zor.

Top image: Jerk Face (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Baron Von Fancy (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Phone booth ad take over by an identified artist. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tictail…speaking of female resistance… (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Consumer Art borrows from Banksy and quotes the current occupant in the Oval Office. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Paola Delfin. Detail. Barcelona. (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Unidentified artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A clever paste-up collab between Ethan Armen and Thomas Allen with the humenbote logo (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Claudio Dre. Detail. Barcelona. (photo © Luis Olive Bulbena)

Peter Tunney (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

Paris Sketch Culture (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Zor (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pantonio. Detail. Barcelona (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

City Kitty takes the children for a ride on the Kittymobile…(photo © Jaime Rojo)

Love this tag…who is the writer? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mr. Sis. Detail. Barcelona (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sac Six (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Jerry and his birds. Manhattan, NYC. March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

Read more
Elbi Elem Breaks the Rectangle for 12+1 in Barcelona

Elbi Elem Breaks the Rectangle for 12+1 in Barcelona

“Break with the rectangle as the space to intervened,” says artist Elbi Elem, the March painter for this wall curated monthly in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Spain. The abstract muralist says she began making kinetic sculpture in 2002 and has an interest in movement, composition and form.

Elbi Elem. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

In fact she has redirected the attention outside of the rectangular canvas with an arching red line that extends beyond the stage, perhaps to annex a part of the sky and add it to the composition.

In her description of the new piece just completed, Ms. Elem says the flexible tube forms “forming a visual circuit” that captures the movement of the trains above – and becomes a framing device for anyone who may want to pose with it on the landing.

Elbi Elem. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

Far from the rectilinear boxing of Mondrian and certainly not in his primary palette, the work is nonetheless geometric abstraction, calling to mind some of the heroic adds for locomotives and rail transportation of our last mid century.

By inducing the element of the handrail diagonally bisecting the wall, Elem opens the experience, rather than sealing it closed, symbolizing, as she says “traveling, moving forward, and action.”

Elbi Elem. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

Elbi Elem. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

Elbi Elem. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

 

For more information about Contorno Urbano please click HERE.

Read more
Sixe Paredes: Future-Folk Geometry In Barcelona

Sixe Paredes: Future-Folk Geometry In Barcelona

The Future-Folk Geometrist named Sixe Paredes is in Madrid at Palacio Neptuno this weekend for the Urvanity commercial art fair but today we have a look at a recent large scale pared he painted for the Open Walls Conference in Barcelona recently.

Sixe Paredes. Open Walls Conference 2016. Barcelona, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Even at this massive scale there is a handmade warmth recalling traditional craft and the people of perhaps Central and South America; dissembling and abstracting its patterns and elements and re-stitching them in an open, inviting way.

Here we give BSA readers a peak at the process of making the mural with documentation by BSA collaborator Lluis Olive Bulbena:

Sixe Paredes. Open Walls Conference 2016. Barcelona, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Sixe Paredes. Open Walls Conference 2016. Barcelona, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Sixe Paredes. Open Walls Conference 2016. Barcelona, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Sixe Paredes. Open Walls Conference 2016. Barcelona, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Sixe Paredes. Open Walls Conference 2016. Barcelona, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Sixe Paredes. Open Walls Conference 2016. Barcelona, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Sixe Paredes. Open Walls Conference 2016. Barcelona, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Sixe Paredes. Open Walls Conference 2016. Barcelona, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Sixe Paredes. Open Walls Conference 2016. Barcelona, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Read more
“Liberate the Child Within” Roc Blackblock for 12 + 1 in Barcelona

“Liberate the Child Within” Roc Blackblock for 12 + 1 in Barcelona

Free your mind, and the rest will follow.

Not only is it a lyric from a 90s pop song, it is a truth that people learn everyday to liberate themselves from attitudes and world views that they’ve accepted but now want to let go of.

Roc Blackblock. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Anton)

Catalan Street Artist Roc Blackblock creates a cage around the head and shoulders of his protagonist for the Project 12+1 in Barcelona. He calls it “Llibera l’infant que portes dins!”, which translates as “Liberate the Child Within”.

It makes sense because many adults stopped being creative or expressing their creativity after childhood – bowing to messages from schools, parents, even religious institutions. At some point we don’t even trust our abilities to be creative anymore.

Roc Blackblock. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Anton)

But Roc says you can get back there.

“It’s an invitation to reconnect with the aspects of ourselves that adult life and social pressures have repressed and dulled; spontaneity, creativity, fantasy, and imagination,” he says.

It’s worth a try, right?

Roc Blackblock. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Fernando Alcalá Losa)

Roc Blackblock. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Anton)

Read more
BSA Images Of The Week: 02.12.17

BSA Images Of The Week: 02.12.17

BSA-Images-Week-Jan2015

“It’s surreal to be on the south side of the US border,” we said last week about being in Mexico. Sorry to report that it may be even more surreal on this side.

Trump and Co. suffered a setback on their Muslim travel ban via the courts but are reportedly breaking out the ICE and going after undocumented people inside US cities suddenly. Politicians are reportedly being flooded with phone calls, letters, postcards, and overflowing town halls from people riled by extreme actions of the new president, and protests pop up sort of everywhere right now about DAPL, Planned Parenthood, immigration….

Meanwhile he’s raging against the judiciary in ALL CAPS, still saying the murder rate is high when its actually low, bankers and corporate captains are sailing into positions in his cabinet, his manic spokes-spinners are attacking/being attacked rhetorically and/or selling his daughters’ fashion wares on live news, his National Security Advisor may have tipped off Russians about easing sanctions before the inauguration, and his top advisor appears to have a large Armageddon roast slathered with terror sauce for breakfast…  frankly there is too much fresh horror every day to re-count and we all have a giant pile of laundry to get caught up on. Jeez!

Meanwhile New York had an impressive snowstorm this week, BAST had his first show of new work in something like 4 years at Allouche Gallery, and Jilly Ballistic is cutting and slicing her way through subway billboard satire in a way that’s pretty funny!

Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring: 1Up, Icy & Sot, Jilly Ballistic, Josef Foos, Karm, Michelle Angela Ortiz, Pichi & Avo, Sam Durant, Street-People, and Sebastien Waknine.

Top image: Icy & Sot (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Michelle Angela Ortiz for #artinadplaces. NYC phone booth ad takeover. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“If my parents are deported, I will have to raise my sister.” Erick 13 years old

Jilly Ballistic. NYC Subway ad takeover. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jilly Ballistic. NYC Subway ad takeover. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sam Durant “End White Supremacy” sign outside Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea, NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pichi & Avo. Houston Bowery Wall for Goldman Global Arts in Manhattan, NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pichi & Avo. Detail. Houston Bowery Wall for Goldman Global Arts in Manhattan, NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

143 ?? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Street-People on the streets of Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Street-People on the streets of Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

1UP and company. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist on the streets of Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Josef Foos in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

Unidentified Artist on the streets of Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Karm on the streets of Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

SebastienWaknine on the streets of Barcelona. (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

 

SebastienWaknine on the streets of Barcelona. (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

SebastienWaknine on the streets of Barcelona. (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Untitled. Buskers. NYC Subway. February 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

 

 

Read more
Sebastien Waknine, Rubicon1, Mugraff “Journey of a Refugee” in Barcelona

Sebastien Waknine, Rubicon1, Mugraff “Journey of a Refugee” in Barcelona

As the world looks on and Americans are deciding which of the world’s refugee children to ban from the country, London-born Street Artist Sebastien Waknine has created a new work in Barcelona called “Journey of a Refugee” with Rubicon 1 and Mugraff.

Sebastien Waknine (0ld lady) in collaboration with Rubicon 1 (refugees) and Mugraff (letters) titled “Journey of a Refugee”.  Detail. Barcelona, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

One of the most active artists in the streets creating in a variety of styles of work that lean toward realism and sometimes tilt into fantasy and exaggerated caricature the London born Waknine decided to do this mural on Selva de Mar to speak to the pure human factors in a refugee crisis that grips much of the developed and developing world.

Sebastien Waknine (0ld lady) in collaboration with Rubicon 1 (refugees) and Mugraff (letters) titled “Journey of a Refugee”.  Detail. Barcelona, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

The new work captures the raw human emotions of fear, desperation and distress of people afloat on rough waters. Somehow Waknine also brings dignity to the harrowing scene and references classical painting, as he has on walls in his travels to countries like Mexico, France, Israel, Germany, and England.

As some societies open their doors to help those fleeing war and imminent danger it seems unthinkable to do anything less for the least of these.

Sebastien Waknine (0ld lady) in collaboration with Rubicon 1 (refugees) and Mugraff (letters) titled “Journey of a Refugee”.  Detail. Barcelona, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Read more