Italian photographer/street artist Bifido writes to us from what appears to have become his second home – the Mostar Street Art Festival in Bosnia and Herzegovina. “Going to Mostar for me is like changing rooms.” Perhaps these are the rooms of Bluebeard’s castle.
Bifido. Mostar Street Art Festival. Mostar, Bosnia & Herzegovina. (photo courtesy of the artist)
For a street artist, he makes a fabulous opera singer – full of drama, dreams, and disillusionment. He tells us that this piece expresses the profound meanings he has discerned from sitting on the bank of the Neretva. We find promise in seeing the wings with which this new character may take flight yet above the Nertva.
Bifido. Mostar Street Art Festival. Mostar, Bosnia & Herzegovina. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Bifido. Mostar Street Art Festival. Mostar, Bosnia & Herzegovina. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Sometimes it just hits you, a joke. You bend back and lift your chin and belt out a joyful laugh.In the pantheon of positive health behaviors, this unbridled outburst must be one of those actions recommended regularly – sure to keep your life lighter and longer.
“The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.”
J.D. Salinger
Bifido. Popularte Festival. Lozzi, Corsica. France. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Italian street artist, photographer, sociologist, and philosopher Bifido shows us this newest diptych of two girls expressing simple emotions in the smallest town we can imagine. Not far from the laughing girl is the shy one, hiding behind her hands, unsure if that will be enough to comfort herself.
“Lozzi is in the Niolu region, about 80 people live there, there is no commercial activity, no bar, no market, no school, nothing,” Bifido says, which makes you consider the impact of these powerful large-scale images before an audience not accustomed to the visual litter of the big city.
We are always intrigued by such small towns across Europe inhabited by a handful of individuals. We asked Bifido about the town and he told us that “I believe that such a village can make you fall in love. Totally surrounded by nature, a precious silence and all noises are children of nature. The gentleman who organizes the festival is a math teacher at the university, when he has to go to work he takes 1 hour by car which I imagine is nothing for you, but for a European, especially one who lives in such a place it is a long way.
He organizes the festival himself and does it for the local children. In fact, he has a beautiful spirit. He likes to invite artists who involve local children, and even sometimes with the artists themselves, the children destroy the works after a few days as an act of participation”.
Bifido. Popularte Festival. Lozzi, Corsica. France. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Even in these photographs, disconnected from logos or brands or campaign messages, an observer is pushed to calculate the scale of a photorealistic image in relation to these settings. It is unclear if the images respond directly to the town, or if they presents new spirits in their midst.
For a town that is barely so, one considers the life here, where “there are only scattered huts, mountains, rivers, lakes, cows and other animals that roam undisturbed through the alleys.” Bifido adds to the public space with these images. Each is in a way similarly isolated – as are the residents of this place that was once full of the everday hallmarks of a healthy society.
In both portraits Bifido creates a poignant distillation of a moment – for anyone to discover and interpret on their way through Lozzi.
Bifido. Popularte Festival. Lozzi, Corsica. France. (photo courtesy of the artist)Bifido. Popularte Festival. Lozzi, Corsica. France. (photo courtesy of the artist)Bifido. Popularte Festival. Lozzi, Corsica. France. (photo courtesy of the artist)Bifido. Popularte Festival. Lozzi, Corsica. France. (photo courtesy of the artist)Bifido. Popularte Festival. Lozzi, Corsica. France. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Intergenerational conflict ebbs and flows through history – and right now, along with so many other points of societal contention, it appears to be flowing.
In a matter of a decade, for example, the term “Baby Boomer” has transformed from something to be admired to the shortened term “Ok Boomer”. Coined by their own progeny – it is meant as a dismissive, even contemptuous disregard of the generation born after WWII. Sort of ironic, given the rebellious young hippies that the Boomers once were, to see them openly derided by Millenials.
And the youth… ahh, the youth. They’ve been bothersome for years – or centuries, to be exact. 4th Century B.C.E. carries a quote from rhetoric by Aristotle about those darn kids:
“[Young people] are high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life, nor have they experienced the force of circumstances. … They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.”
Bifido. Everything changes but you’re always the same shit. Sicily, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)
While we aren’t sure what the backstory is of this new photo-pasted mural by the Italian street artist Bifido, one may surmise the screaming old and young subjects have reached a tipping point in the high-intensity arguments that occur between generations. Added to this fight is that the one the young artist tells us surrounded it’s installation here in Sicily, Italy.
“This piece is the fruit of many days of work. Work often hindered both by the hosting community and by the very people who commissioned it. It was a process made up of arguments, silences and distances difficult to bridge. During my stay, many times I changed my mind about what I was going to do and I finally decided to honor some teenagers I met there, without whom I couldn’t have done anything. Those teenagers come up every single day against a narrow-minded and short-sighted mindset which they stubbornly try to change.”
Bifido. Everything changes but you’re always the same shit. Sicily, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)
It sounds like it was a very intense experience, and yet we all know the fervor the artist speaks of. Diplomats also council that the only way forward is usually some form of compromise.
“So, no compromises,” says Bifido of his experience. The name of the work also indicates the rancor that can lead us to wars – again it rings through the centuries; “everything changes but you’re always the same shit”
Bifido. Everything changes but you’re always the same shit. Sicily, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)Bifido. Everything changes but you’re always the same shit. Sicily, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)Bifido. Everything changes but you’re always the same shit. Sicily, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)
The Italian street artist has created this new old guy on the wall of an abandoned tobacco factory here in the small village of Gambettola in the north of the country. He’s pensive and possibly despairing for sure, possibly because he worked at this factory for decades, Bifido surmises.
“A life at work, a life without life. Life in your free time, spent being entertained in some refreshing recreational activity,” he says.
“I often think of the concept of free time. I hate free time. It is the charity of a society that wants us to be slaves. full with a sweat that exhausts us, without giving joy. Making a work on the concept of work for me meant expressing all my dissent against this absurd idea that work (as mere sustenance) gives meaning to our life.”
Surely there is something redeeming to be said of a lifetime of work in a tobacco factory, but Bifido was not feeling cheerful today. Well, at least he feels more positive about his own work, he tells us. “Making art is my job and I love it.”
I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps out Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.
Sylvia Plath
Street poet and street artist Bifido doesn’t mean to be morose, but here in Mostar he can’t help himself as he creates mirrored expressions of a sullen, ill-tempered youth on city streets. Part of the Bosnian /Herzegovinian street art festival named after this city of 113,000 Croats (48.4%), Bosniaks (44.1%), and Serbs (4.1%), the annual meeting of international and local artists produces a broad variety of artworks for the city.
Bifido. “Love Will Tear Us Apart”. Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Bifido has been here before, and he says his feeling of ardor and confliction are hopelessly intertwined. “I have a special connection with this country,” he tells us of this city grown in the wake of and destruction of war; a gorgeous bridge now a symbol to many, one that rises over troubled waters. “I love Bosnia. I met her and I fell in love with her.”
The bridge, he says, is inhabited by an odd mix of memory, hope for the future, and questionable tourism trade that includes souvenir shops, odd perfumes, and “the most Bosnian thing you can find is the Ibrahimovic jersey (which is not Bosnian).”
Bifido. “Love Will Tear Us Apart”. Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. (photo courtesy of the artist)
But above all else, for Bifido, is the feeling of this city he returns to, and the feeling of the river that runs through it, the Neretva.
“Neretva is for me a state of mind,” he says. “It is not a river, is liquid melancholy. Every day we spend a couple of hours together.” “This work is my tribute to this land. To this city. To all the people who live there. Even the most assholes. A cry melted along the tortured walls. Walls of inhabited houses, of empty houses. The cry of the invisible.”
Bifido. “Love Will Tear Us Apart”. Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. (photo courtesy of the artist)Bifido. “Love Will Tear Us Apart”. Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. (photo courtesy of the artist)Bifido. “Love Will Tear Us Apart”. Mostar Street Art Festival. Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Italian street artist Bifido finishes this rough wall with the sweetest of sentiments here as summer draws ever nearer to its end. Quoting Keats, as romantics are wont to do, Bifido tells us his latest staged photo wheatpaste is transparent in its sentiment, opaque in his specific meaning.
“It is a hug, so it is something that can be shared,” he offers. “For this time I have nothing to say about this piece.” Enough said.
“You turned a wall of dust into an artwork,” says an organizer of the ArtAeroRap, the International Urban Arts Festival sponsored by a digital services firm with municipal and city partners. The current “2021 Vaccine Edition” features music and art installations and performances here in La Bañeza, a municipality located in León, Spain.
Mounted on a grizzled façade that fell apart while he was installation his new artwork on it, Bifido’s photographic mural is on one of the most decrepit walls we’ve seen in a while.
“I’m super proud of this piece because I chose a really, really bad wall.,” he tells us. “Full of dust, shitty things, holes, different materials and levels. I had a really good time there.”
“Stanotte, riesco ad immaginarti… So che indosserai la tua bellezza, un sorriso di tale gioia, così brillante e luminoso, come quando con occhi rapiti e doloranti, perso in una dolce meraviglia, io ti guardai, io ti guardai!”
IItalian Street artist Bifido has perfected his technique of dissolving his wheat-pasted photography into aerosol painting on the street, producing a seamless atmospheric story that leaps from the wall; evocative of oil masters but somehow with hyper real people living presently in a surreal tableau. Narrative also has been sharpened and emerges as being intently purposeful.
In this new series of artworks we learn about folks who are living in a modest sized town here that, like many towns in Italy, is being quietly and radically transformed by its shrinking population of aging citizens.
By interviewing the inhabitants and becoming familiar with this small interconnected community, sometimes intimately so, he is determined to help tell their stories, their histories. A collaborative practice, Bifido is there when they see the finished piece in public space.
Today we’re pleased to present Bifido’s newest works in Stigliano, accompanied by his own words to describe the process of creating them.
I spent a month in Stigliano, a small town, in an equally small and remote region of southern Italy. I was able to immerse myself totally in the reality of the people who live there, learning incredible stories. During this time I worked on 4 murals around the village. Stigliano rises to 1200 meters above sea level and you can see a boundless landscape. The feeling of isolation is very strong.
The work that most involved me is on two eighty-year-old sisters. Giulia and Filomena. They were locked in the house by a jealous father for nearly 40 years. They could only go out with their mother and only go to church. No school, no friends. They could not even see their relatives, because they had studied and this could negatively affect them. Their father said: “A woman can leave the house 3 times in her life, at baptism, marriage and funeral ”. Obviously because they could not go out, they’ve never had a chance to meet someone and fall in love.
They were not very familiar with either watching television or listening to the radio. Every February there is an Italian song festival. During the time of their isolation they tell me that they would sneak past the windows trying to listen to the songs of the neighbors’ radios. Being able to hear only the melody and not the words, they rewrote the lyrics according to their life.
After a life of repression and isolation, these two sisters are two women full of life, curiosity and empathy. They are very different, but they belong together. They sleep in the same room, on cots separated by a bedside table, and in the darkest nights they shake hands “giving courage”. But if the dark nights are truly haunted, they snuggle together in the same bed. And if you look at them from above they look like strong roots stuck in the mattress.
you have to be a rock to roll fast you have to be a rock to be shaped by the wind you have to be a rock to withstand the blows you have to be a rock to look into the abyss you have to be a rock to laugh at life (Giulia, Filomena and Bifido)
I made two interventions in the historic center of the town, now almost completely uninhabited. A wonderful and desperate place. Full of silence and beauty. Stigliano has lived for years thanks to the wheat harvest and peasant life has characterized the town throughout its history.
I portrayed a peasant woman with wheat. Symbol of the city. And I installed it in one of the dark and forgotten alleys of the city and on a real farm. I wanted to give prestige to something noble and beautiful, but also to make the walls of this semi-abandoned town remember the souls who lived there. The peasants were also carriers of revolt. I want to remember the memory and tell people not to forget and fight for survival.
This is a little poetry that I wrote for the mural of the farmer in the street:
I am the fallen stone The empty house with a torn roof They are the endless fields Dry of life The rain and the hawk Between the steady gazes Between the vanished faces I am the crack The lair of remembrance I am the unknown day And you?”
This work talks about the problem of depopulation. In 10 years Stigliano has lost almost all of its population, from 12,000 to 3,000 inhabitants. I used the verses of the poet Pio Rasulo, a native of Stigliano, who had already foreseen the depopulation of the town in 1961.
“Only the crows that gorge themselves here, in the bean fields, and the piles of wood guarding the crumbling walls will remain”.
I wrote this sentence on the wall and then covered it with a photo I took of the locals. Over time the card will be destroyed as the poetic verse appears. Just like the depopulation phenomenon, people will disappear and only crows will remain.
Just below the Vienna U-Bahn, and above the street, there are two new archangels shielding their eyes from us, possibly looking into one another’s.
“The only true voyage, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees, that each of them is; and this we do (with great artists); with artists like these we do really fly from star to
star.”
Italian Street Artist Bifido tells us that this quote is part of the inspiration for his new collaborative piece that spreads its wings below the rumbling of rolling wheels in this busy city. The other inspiration is drawn from the experience of working for the first time with his painting partner, the Danish artist Jacoba Niepoort who adds the extending wings to Bifidos photorealistic searching figures.
“When I saw Jacoba’s work for the first time, I thought, ‘I absolutely have to work with this artist,’ ” he tells us, remarking on the intensity that he rarely finds in the world of Street Art. “It’s not just something decorative; it digs deeper, touching the most intimate and emotional part of people.”
The pair met at the Calle Libre Festival in Vienna this summer and decided that their first project together would examine the intimacy of human relationships. The experience has enabled them both to look at the same scenario with each other’s eyes, he says, and now passersby in Vienna can as well.
FART Fatti Urbani is a two day festival (Oct 6&7) in the Municipality of Cerignola in the south of Italy (population 58,534) that holds as its central hub an interest in Street Art and Urban Culture. In this context Street Art is primarily a reference to mural art, rather than the practice of unsanctioned art-making that the term originates from.
Bifido. “Too many kids finding rain in the dust“. Fart festival. Cerignola, Italy. October 2018. (photo courtesy of Bifido)
The weekend features artist workshops for youth on the themes of digital art, scenography, illustration, photography and there are exhibitions, talks, screenings and participatory art projects for children. Central to the events is the installation of murals in three neighborhoods of Torricelli, the San Samuele district, and the downtown.
Italian Street Artist Bifido staged one of his theatrical photoshoots with two young actors to create this metaphor for strife in the metaphysical sense, a battle perhaps between good and evil. Organizers say that public art events like this provide impetus for a social gathering around artist expression and ideas, catalyzing discussion and appreciation for art and culture. We particularly like the description on the itinerary under “Social Lunch”, which roughly translated, says “to counter the weariness, the alienation of modern life and lunches of solitude, Saturday we all eat together. Everyone brings something, we sit at the table”.
Bifido. “Too many kids finding rain in the dust“. Fart festival. Cerignola, Italy. October 2018. (photo courtesy of Bifido)
Bifido’s piece has garnered a lot of attention, and a public festival like this appears to engage people just at a historical time when the “alienation of modern life”, at least in the so-called developed societies, is at its highest in decades.
The artist tells us that the wall is in a peripheral and notoriously dangerous neighborhood. “That kind of dormitory neighborhood where you can only find concrete and desperation,” he says. “I called my mural: ‘Too many kids finding rain in the dust’ .”
Bifido. “Too many kids finding rain in the dust“. Fart festival. Cerignola, Italy. October 2018. (photo courtesy of Bifido)
The Instagram page of the AAD , the architectural design firm sponsoring some of the events, reflects their impression of the effect of art performed in public like this, “It was an incredible experience – it introduced us to a community that wants novelty and beauty. The work of @bifidoart has been adopted and taken to heart by the entire district as a symbol of a good omen for the not too distant future. The wonder is in everyone’s eyes, whatever their path of life.”
Fantastic? In many ways. A difficult name of a festival for English speakers to deal with? No doubt.
Bifido is frequently using his photography and wheatpastes to conjure a realistic vision of the plays and odysseys that children imagine, balancing as they do along the margins of reality and fantasy. In this new piece he just finished for Collettivo Boca he looks at the practice of putting on a mask figuratively, knowing very well that many of us use masks as adults as well.
He names the new piece after the painter of Dorian Gray in the Oscar Wilde novel about youth and its loss – and appearances. “Basil Hallward” joins other walls made for the festival by artists such as Bosoletti, Millo, Alex Senna, Nemo’s, an Milu Correch in this town called Bonito in the south of Italy.
The Bushwick Collective street party was so crowded with people and artists it felt like an open air gallery of sights and sounds. Don’t mess with BK yo when it comes to bringing it on. Roiling, boiling, thumping, bumping and yes, humping was happening in Bushwick. We even took a Street Art tour since there appears to be one every two blocks right now – and we learned a number of new things too.
Meanwhile, the new murals and independent organic unauthorized pieces are popping like your eyes watching a Nicki Minaj video. Oh no she didn’t. Oh yes, she did!
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Alabania, Android Oi, Antennae, Bebar, Below Key, Bifido, Celia Jacobs, City Kitty, Dee Dee, Gitler, Gondek, Himbad, Invader, Jacinta, JPS, Muck Rock, Quizi, Street Art Council, Tirana, and Who is Dirk?
Bifido created this new work in Albania for the Tirana Mural Fest, entitled “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”
He explains:
“This work should have been called “self portrait”, as it express how I’m feeling in this moment at the sight of the world. Working, talking, scoping, and breathing Tirana’s atmosphere I really realized for the very first time how it feels to be a woman caught in the grips of this male chauvinist society, to be a woman physically and mentally oppressed by men. As the work progressed, the sense of it changed and revealed itself to me. Now that I am back home in Italy, I’m more aware of something that makes me feel heartbroken. I’m hoping one day something will change.”
Sharp tongued and defiant, that’s the way we like our young people, and Gen Z has a lot of loud mouthed articulate and savvy ones who are not going to be fooled out of gun control, if yesterdays marches in NYC and hundreds of cities are any indication. As Spring officially arrived in New York on Thursday, we are expecting even more action in the streets from artists and activists each passing day now.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets (and elsewhere), this week featuring Adam Fujita, Anthony Lister, Balu, Banksy, Baron Von Fancy, Bifido, Dain, Dede, Gane, GlossBlack, Hoxxoh, JerkFace, Kuma, Lacky, Nitzan Mintz, Paper Skaters, Pussy Power Posse, Ratanic, RESP, Shock, and Texas.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
