Elisa Capdevila has turned the walls of Barcelona’s Paral·lel into a living history lesson with her latest mural, a tribute to the former Teatro Talia. Once a cornerstone of the Sant Antoni neighborhood’s cultural identity, the Talia has long since been erased from the cityscape, but its memory is revived through this large-scale artwork. Situated near the theater’s original location, the mural was curated and produced by Street Art Barcelona as part of the ongoing ‘Sant Antoni Recuperem el Talia’ initiative. According to the organizers, the project became a testament to collective memory and community-driven art after weather-related delays.
The mural portrays a backstage moment at the close of a performance, an actress wiping away makeup as the curtain falls. Capdevila, a Barcelona native, draws a poignant connection between the end of a show and the theater’s closure. Collaboratively designed with local groups, the mural amplifies feminist themes, celebrating the overlooked contributions of women in both the performing arts and grassroots activism. The imagery speaks directly to the community’s fight to preserve the cultural relevance of the Talia while advocating for affordable housing and public spaces on its historic grounds.
Beyond the mural’s visual impact, the temporary cultural space it overlooks serves as a gathering point for play and small events—a reminder of the Paral·lel’s former vibrancy, now surrounded by the shifting tides of gentrification. Capdevila’s new work serves as an homage to the past and perhaps a rallying cry for the future.
The collaborating community organizations include:
– Plataforma Sant Antoni recuperem el Talia – Associació Pro Teatre Talia Olympia – Teatre Arnau Itinerant – Federació d’entitats de Calàbria 66
– Centre Cívic Cotxeres Borrell – Vocalía de feminisme barri de Sant Antoni – Fem Sant Antoni – Taula Comunitaria Sant Antoni – AVV Barri de Sant Antoni – De Veí a Veí – Escola Aldana – Comunitat de veïns de los dos edificios (Avenida Paral·lel y C/Comte Borrell)
This is part 2 of a series of new works from the 10th Annual Street Art Fest Grenoble, with photographs by veteran photographer Martha Cooper. The massive variety, quantity, and quality of works at Grenoble place it ahead of many festivals, as you can see here. Many of the murals are in context with their surroundings and collaborate with them in a meaningful way. For its 2024 edition, the Street Art Fest Grenoble-Alpes celebrates its 10th anniversary under the direction of Jérôme Catz and The Spacejunk Art Center. Today we focus strictly on the big statements, and there are many.
From October 18 to 22, 2023, the Points de Vue Festival celebrated its seventh year in the realm of public art. This annual gathering brought together a group of nine artists, spanning local and international talents, to adorn the walls of Bayonne and the communes of the Northern Basque Country. Supported by a blend of private and municipal funding, the festival acts as a vibrant showcase for the diverse world of street art, skillfully blending pleasing imagery in murals across Bayonne, all while weaving a narrative that nods to the roots of street art and graffiti. Simultaneously, it seamlessly integrates the region’s rich cultural heritage, its inhabitants, and historical narratives.
Evolved in its presentation, the festival offers a comprehensive program encompassing exhibitions, concerts, and screenings, to cultivate an environment that encourages audiences to engage with artistic creation from multiple angles. Through interactive workshops, attendees have the chance to nurture their artistic potential, with encounters with artworks often igniting passions or fostering enduring curiosities. Since 2022, Points de Vue has also facilitated gatherings of visual arts professionals, openly addressing the ever-evolving dynamics of the sector with the public.
Today, the Points de Vue open-air gallery in Bayonne aims to transcend physical and intellectual confines, infusing streets, landscapes, and daily life with a unifying artistic essence. This year’s festival brought together artists from both international and local realms, showcasing a rich diversity inherent in their works. Whether through graffiti or contemporary art, these distinguished participants, drawn from various influences and backgrounds, leave their indelible creative mark on urban spaces, a trend increasingly witnessed at festivals of this nature.
Elisa Capdevila finds her muse in the ordinary occurrences of life, accentuating the lyricism of unassuming events in a life: a holiday, a familial repast, a stroll through the countryside… Her murals, dispersed across various European nations, make us envision and reflect.
After painting murals commercially for prominent brands, Sophie Mess heads on an artistic journey that she hopes will empower her to express her creative vision more freely. Now it looks like the world she conjures on urban canvases derives inspiration from the domain of botany. Infusing the urban landscape with vibrant hues amid its grey facades, Sophie Mess encourages onlookers to reflect upon the balance/imbalance of the natural world.
Exploring the conventions of classical art and graffiti, the artistic partnership of PichiAvo forges an urban dialect at the intersection of creative movements, a style embraced by both critics and the wider audience. Their creations consistently captivate with their colossal presence, where contemporary and ancestral elements harmoniously coexist.
A Franco-German artist, residing between Berlin and Chile, Jan Vormann restores city walls by incorporating a Lego mosaic within their crevices, and has been doing this for many years. His artistic statement carries a playful and peacemaking essence, subverting the monotonous world of grown-ups while playfully acknowledging the inner child within us all.
Starting in 2021, Points de Vue has been extending its reach beyond the confines of Bayonne, encompassing the expanse of the Communauté d’Agglomération Pays Basque. This expansion offers invited artists the unique opportunity to engage in residencies within local communities, enabling them to draw inspiration from their host locations. Over several weeks, artists immerse themselves in the local environment, fostering dialogues with community members to craft new works that mirror the essence of their welcoming surroundings. These interactions cultivate authentic exchanges, bringing urban art into new, personal territories.
For this year’s edition, the French-German artist Jan Vormann undertook a creative endeavor at the Gribraltar stele in Uhart-Cize, a historical site at the crossroads of the Compostelle pilgrimage routes.
We were fortunate to have been invited to participate in the very first edition of Nuart Aberdeen back in the quaint days of 2017. We had a blast, and in the process fell in love with this city made of granite. The locals and our hosts made certain that we had all we needed to do our job and to enjoy the festival, the city, and of course its people. With a theme of reconnection, the new iteration of the festival last month brought fresh murals to city walls, perhaps revitalizing people’s connection to the built environment in a new way.
A franchising, of sorts, of the original Norwegian Nuart festival and its originators, this offshoot festival was so successful that year that city officials here funded another few editions. The events that engage the community feature live painting, a speaker program, walking tours, a pub fight/debate, and children’s art programming. All told it’s a warm example of street art culture mainstreaming itself right into the daily fabric of this prosperous Scottish city often called the “Oil Capital of Europe”
Photographer Martha Cooper was invited to participate in Nuart’s newest event and she shares with us and our readers her documentation of the 11 artists’ artworks on the streets of Aberdeen.
Martha tells us that this “I Will Pay Taxes” mural is painted on a building whose owner didn’t pay his taxes. It was controversial but in the end, the organizers of the festival prevailed to keep the wall up without alterations or censorship.
As Lleida has discovered, the murals that we place in public these days can have a contemporary finish that is professional. Perhaps that is why this Catalonian city in Spain has begun in the historic center of this city, a storied place that is documented back to the Bronz Age. Here the traditions of past artisans are revered, studied and emulated – with the new vocabularies still determining the tenor.
Today we share a few of the new walls at the Lleida Pot Fest, a collection of the new generation of mainly figurative painters who go large scale and then go home.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. INTI “Soleil”. Blinded by the Light. 2. Martha Cooper: Queen der Street Art 3. Elisa Capdevila x Anna Repullo. Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12+1 Project 4. Mare 139 : L’ avenir” Graffuturism. Group Exhibition. 5. FAUST: L’ avenir” Graffuturism. Group Exhibition.
BSA Special Feature: INTI “Soleil”. Blinded by the Light.
OMG WHERE does Chop ’em Down get their music from? Finally we said it out loud.
Yes, the monstrous archive of top-notch video that they are amassing of Street Artists and others creating work in the world is scintillating, the gut-punch editing is riveting, the pickings are lush. But time and again Zane nails it into next week with the music choices. Bless you brother.
INTI “Soleil”. Blinded by the Light. Video by Chop ’em Down Films for Peinture Fraiche Festival. Lyon, France.
Martha Cooper: Queen der Street Art via ZDF German TV (in German no subtitles)
Our sincere thanks to Susanne Lingemann and ZDF German TV for this great piece on Martha Cooper during the premiere of Selina Miles’ movie “Martha: A Picture Story” at Tribeca Film Festival. Next stop Sydney!
Elisa Capdevila x Anna Repullo. Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12+1 Project
Easily the winner of wackiest choice of concept and music for the year so far is this wiccan themed duo in Spain painting walls across from each other on an underpass. Something to do with sensuality and competitiveness and … witchcraft? Good painting tho.
L’avenir
L’avenir Graffuturism Group Exhibition
A special collection of works opened on April 26th under the banner “Graffuturism”, guided by its creator and advocate, the artist Poesia. The lineup includes a number of artists along the street art/graffiti /contemporary continuum such as Augustine Kofie, Tobias Kroeger, Carlos Mare, Doze Green, Jaybo Monk, Faust, Kenor, and Matt W. Moore – each with distinct graphic voices of their own. Below are a couple of brief profiles from the show follow here.
“L’ avenir” Graffuturism. Group Exhibition. Mare139.
“L’ avenir” Graffuturism. Group Exhibition. Faust.
One of three female artists keep these walls on lockdown right now in Sant Vicenç dels Horts, Capdevilla says she’s calling into question our classical comparisons of our own bodies to those ideals of Eurocentric sculptures and painters from centuries ago.
She says “the plaster bodies are a good analogy for the rigid canons of beauty we’re used to,” and you can see exactly what she is talking about, from many angles.
Organizers
of the parent project “Contorno Urbano,” itself a grassroots run collection of
public and Street Artists and their admirers, say work like this hits one of
their many people-fueled goals. “We keep working every day to normalize women’s
participation in Street art projects, because art belongs to all of us.”
While You Were Sleeping is a Korean TV series about a woman who can see the future in her dreams, and a prosecutor who fights to stop these future events from happening. The title also makes us think about the scam of a Tax bill passed while you were sleeping in the middle of the night between Friday and Saturday.
The servants of the rich, these wolves, are facilitating the largest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class up to their masters for well into the future, and it appears that few are awake to see it. It also pulls health insurance out from underneath 13 million sleeping people. The majority of the country was against this but the servants pushed it through anyway when you weren’t stirring. Good night!
Street Art better be dope ya’ll, because that’s where many of us will be living soon – the street.
But we are wide awake for sex scandals, by golly. Powerful men are being accused by past alleged victims from every sector in society right now. We are keeping our fingers crossed that Santa Claus can stay above the fray!
Meanwhile, the tree got lit this week in Rockefeller Center, a lot of people are going to get lit this month at their office holiday party, many NYC art denizens are heading to the Miami Basel Circus this week, and apparently there is supposed to be some Street Art thing happening there too.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring BD White, Daek, Elbi Elem, Elisa Capdevila, Faile, Jason Woodside, Jerkface, Kai, Killjoy, Magda Love, Mazatl, Mr. Toll, Ola Kalnins, Praxis, Timothy Goodman, and Sonni.
Carmencita is a name synonymous with the florid, proud and fanciful folklore of Spain expressed through the image of a colorful dancer. Castenets please! Flowers tossed at her feet, swirling skirt dizzying and brilliant.
While the famous dancer named Carmecita whom most Spaniards are familiar with was born in 1868 and was painted by John Singer Sargent (Musée d’Orsay, Paris) and William Merrit Chase (The Met, New York) among other notable painters, her image is less that of a person than of an archetype for mural painters Elisa Capdevila and Iván Floro, who were both born in the mid 1990s.
Their new collaboration on a long wall in Sant Feliú is an opportunity to paint an image on the street that is impressionist and classical, and then to almost turn it on its head.
“Neither of us know the figure in the foreground, and it does not really matter except to know that she was connected to the world of entertainment and that the public admired her,” they tell us.
The image is compelling, ebullient and a bit of a mystery – even more so as it has been rotated ninety degrees counterclockwise along the sidewalk of this busy street.
“We decided to represent the figure horizontally because it is a perspective to which we are not accustomed and it is shocking,” they say.
Clearly it is an unusual presentation and interpretation of the image of Carmencita and perhaps it is a furtherance of the concept of a street “intervention”.
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 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.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
