Our weekly focus is on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. Narcelio Grud. Escultura Sonora Cinetica
2. Faith XLVII – Calgary
3. NEW WAVE BY Pejac
BSA Special Feature: Narcelio Grud. Escultura Sonora Cinetica
This is exactly why your kids have fun things to play with at the park and to challenge their imaginations. Former/current street artist and public kinetic art sculptor Narcelio Grud shares with us how he made this new interactive kinetic and sound sculpture in Casa do Governador Cultural Park, in Vila Velha/ES. The action is powered by you: a conveyor belt triggers three mechanisms and pulling the strings activates the clappers of bells.
Narcelio Grud. Escultura Sonora Cinetica
Faith XLVII – Calgary
In her ongoing search for meaning and answers to existential questions, Faith XLVII shares a spoken-word piece to accompany this stop-action video of a mural she called “Calgary”.
“Mais agencés en ballet subtil par FAITH XLVII, il nous fait aussi prendre conscience de notre dérisoire et pourtant précieuse divinité.”
The South African graffiti writer, muralist, and contemporary urban artist has traveled the world extensively and worked tirelessly to develop her milieu, her point of view, and her own spectacular visual language over the last two decades plus. Now her exhibition C/air-Obscur at Musée des Beaux-Arts will present forty works – drawings, tapestries, polaroids, videos, and multimedia installations that are the results of her experimentation and exploration on two levels of the gallery.
A research on shadow and light. About nature. About our behavior. The conscious and the subconscious. Connection and dissonance. The inner world and the outer world,” she says. “The phases of the moon ranging from fullness to absence. Creativity and responsiveness. Sound and silence. An interdependence of the two.”
It is a show that brings you the artist in her fullness, as she has grown creatively to embrace many disciplines and many routes of internal discovery and being. The exhibition will be familiar and new in its pursuits over two levels. “The C/air-Obscur exhibition is structured in two planes,” she explains, “mixing darkness and light in equal parts, from a bright space on the ground floor dedicated to virulent drawings to a dark space upstairs presenting mysterious and paradoxically soothing videos.”
‘You see I want a lot Maybe I want it all; The darkness of each endless fall. The shimmering light of each ascent.’ Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of a Monk’s Life, 1899
MUSEE DES BEAUX-ARTS DE NANCY
3, place Stanislas
54000 Nancy
Faith XLVII Clair – Obscur at the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Nancy, France opens to the general public on April 9th, 2023.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. A tour through L’ESSENTIEL 2. Faith XLVII in Boston 3. A Team On Their Own: Maya Women Fight Inequality Through Baseball.
BSA Special Feature: A tour through L’ESSENTIEL
Updating the 2010’s magpie approach to group show curation of the abandoned industrial palace, L’ESSENTIEL presents a video tour on par with the metaverse – since we are all still awaiting a functional version of that much-ballyhooed digital world we will expect to inhabit.
Here you find a tone-on-tone parade of installations by some of the best in the street art/graffiti game- a common palette and a mostly 2D execution in the spaces that helps keep it all cohesive. Aiding, or distracting, your trip is the glitchy electronic world-wailing soundtrack and the pixel-thin placards that pop out of concrete seams to introduce the pieces hanging in the air nearby. The show is impressive and gives a wholistic aura. The question is, does this ephemerous collection exist here in the physical world or in the digital one?
L’ESSENTIEL: A Collective Experience of The Ephemerous Art. Graffiti / Street Art
Faith XLVII in Boston
“Perhaps you could dream something that happens in the future,” says Faith.
A Team On Their Own: Maya Women Fight Inequality Through Baseball. Via The New Yorker
In Melissa Fajardo’s documentary short “Las Diablillas: The Mayan Rebels,” Mexican baseball players challenge the restrictive gender norms of their small town.
If you think you are being held back, the first step may be to look in the mirror. The second is to look for kindred spirits.
“The idea is there will be two figures dancing while sharing a beautiful blanket, one figure on each wall,” she explained in this project she intended to paint. In May of 2020 she was preparing with her hosts at the festival Echappées d’Arts in Angers, France.
Born in Argentina in 1974, she eventually moved to Spain. Well regarded during the last decade or so in the Street Art world, she made many friends and family during her travels to many world cities to paint. In an act of gratitude and tribute to their friend Hyuro two artists, Faith XLVII of South Africa and Helen Bur of England, each realized these figures from her preparatory sketches.
“The concept of the wall that I like the most is one of a kind of celebration of life… in my personal situation it is a make it very special concept to me,” she wrote.
Hyuro. Sketch for “Douce Vie” (photo courtesy of Eric Surmont)
“Big thanks to @blame_eric_surmont_ and the city of Angers, France for organising this moving tribute to Hyuro’s work and to @escif and @axelvoid for entrusting Faith and I with the task of continuing Tamara’s legacy and sharing her work,” wrote Ms. Bur on her Instagram page.
“One last dance for our friend @h_y_u_r_o ,” says Faith XLVII in her tribute. “It felt strange and difficult to try to mimic Tamara’s sketch that she had planned for these walls. So elegantly thought out with her poetic sense of space and metaphor. We tried not to leave our own mark and to stay true to her rough design. How we will miss the messages that you gave to us. Waking us slowly from our slumber. May you rest sweet sister.”
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. Faith XLVII X KOLEKA PUTUMA 2. Moments Like This Never Last. Cheryl Dunn/Dash Snow. Trailer 3. 9 Ways To Draw a Person
BSA Special Feature: Faith XLVII X KOLEKA PUTUMA
South African Street Artist Liberty Du, known as Faith XLVII shares her new collaboration with Koleka Putuma, the South African queer poet and theatre-maker, this week on BSA Film Friday.
“South African women are brave. Strong. And not just a little strong. They are strong down to their bone marrow. They have known great suffering. And still, they sing. What an honor it’s been to know such women! I’ve been humbled in my life again and again by the sheer resilience of friends. The pain is inexplicable. In the first 3 weeks of lockdown, more than 120 000 cases of Gender-Based Violence were reported across the country. We are exhausted from the news each week. Our sisters, mothers, grandmothers, our children were violated, abused, and murdered. Working on this project alongside Koleka Putuma is not something I take lightly, Koleka is a force. Her words break up open in order to really have real conversations about what’s happening.”
Faith XLVII X KOLEKA PUTUMA
Moments Like This Never Last. Cheryl Dunn/Dash Snow. Trailer
The mythmaking stories continue to propagate about this anti-authoritarian creative skateboarding graffiti-writing white guy from a wealthy family who died too young in a drug-fueled life of experimentation and excess. Cheryl Dunn pulls all the stories together to help establish his talents and hijinx as veritable proof that the early millenial was onto something new in the graffiti/street/art milieu of IRAK crew of 2000s New York – partying hard and hitting the heights.
9 Ways To Draw a Person
The possibilities are absolutely endless, if you are to follow the guidance of film director, artist, animator Sasha Svirsky. By mixing abstraction, collage, and animation, he pulls you in and reawakens your earliest knowledge about creativity, reaffirming that you too, can draw a person.
This time of year, it is hard to find people in Manhattan on the weekends – they’re “weekending” in the Hamptons, darling.
Khari Turner, Hands
Not exactly the original setting you might associate with graffiti, street art, hip-hop, punk rock, zines, and underground art culture but where else can curators Evan Pricco and Kim Stephens sell these works on paper while sipping cool drinks poolside?
“Beyond the Streets” carries the mobile party to Southampton Arts Center this Saturday with a wide swath of styles – 500 works from over 100 artists in an art fair-sized venue. It may remind you of the Urban Air Fair tried in Manhattan in summer 2017, but this one has something that one didn’t: Roger Gastman.
Shepard Fairey, Elysium Lotus
If it’s here, it’s because it is quality work and has a connection to the roots of these subcultural scenes usually as well. Expanding now to the more nebulous category of Contemporary, you may be surprised to see more accessible interpretive variations on the themes. Let’s see that paper, people.
Jane Dickson, Fourth of July 2
Artists include: Action Bronson, Addam Yekutieli, agnès b, AIKO, André Saraiva, Andrew Schoultz, Andrew Thiele, Andy Rementer, Aryz, Bert Krak, Brandon Breaux, Broken Fingaz, Bryant Giles, Camille Walala, CES, Cey Adams, Charlie Ahearn, Chloe Early, Chris FREEDOM Pape, Clark Fox, Cody Hudson, Conor Harrington, Craig Costello, CRASH, DABSMYLA, Daniel Rich, David “Mr StarCity” White, DAZE, DEFER, Emily Manwaring, Eric Haze, Ermsy, Escif, FAILE, Faith XLVII, Fucci, Greg SPONE Lamarche, Gustavo Zermeno, Hilda Palafox, House 33, HuskMitNavn, Ian Reid, Icy & Sot, Jaime Muñoz, Jamilla Okuba, Jane Dickson, JEC*, Jeremy Shockley, Jillian Evelyn, JK5, John Konstantine, Julian Pace, KATSU, KC Ortiz, Kelsey Brookes, Khari Turner, Kime Buzzelli, LeRoy Neiman, Linas Garsys, Liz Flores, Lucy McLauchlan, Lujan Perez, Maripol, Mark Mothersbaugh, Martha Cooper, Marshall LaCount, Matt McCormick, Maya Hayuk, Michael Vasquez, MIKE 171, Mister CARTOON, Neena Ellora, Nehemiah Cisneros, Nettie Wakefield, NUNCA, Otto183, Paije Fuller, Paul Insect, POSE, Rebecca Morgan, Reko Rennie, Rello, Richard Colman, RISK, Ron English, Ryan McGinness, Sage Vaughn, Saladeen Johnson, Scott Campbell, Sean from Texas, Senon Williams, Shantell Martin, Shepard Fairey, SJK 171, Sofía Enriquez, SNOEMAN, Spacebrat, STASH, Steve ESPO Powers, SWOON, TAKI 183, The Perez Bros., Timothy Curtis, Todd James, Troy Lamarr Chew II, Umar Rashid, Victor Reyes, Wasted Rita, Wulffvnky, Yarrow Slaps, Yusuke Hanai, ZESER, ZOER and 45RPM.
BEYOND THE STREETS on PAPER July 17—August 28, 2021 Southampton Arts Center, Southampton, New York, 11968
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. Blinded By The Lines in Poland 2. Dr. Audrey Fernandes Satar and Arif Satar / WA Street Art on The Collie Mural Trail in Australia 3. FAITH XLVII / CHANT
BSA Special Feature: Blinded By The Lines
And the beat goes on – a new homemade video from Poland from taggers Ready (ALKO) Finer (TNA U7) Febs (Legz) Zion (DSTS) Lokal (DRS) in the night putting throwups, tags, and quick silvers.
Blinded By The Lines PT. 1
Dr. Audrey Fernandes Satar and Arif Satar / WA Street Art on The Collie Mural Trail
“This was never an empty wall and we’ve added to this wall another layer of history,” says Dr Audrey Fernandes Satar about her new collaborative mural with Arif Satar in Collie, Western Australia.
From the video description: “The work is Titled ‘Ground’ and is a panoptic drawing of the hills draped with patterns inspired by banksia seed pods, calling attention to the fragility of Collie’s ancient landscape where the river flows gently.”
FAITH XLVII / CHANT
Umber tones of war and oppression, this video directed by A. L. Crego introduces the new show by street artist and fine artist Faith XLVII called CHANT. Incorporating her repetitive, rhythmically placed street texts with overlays of tone and texture and her ferocious and wild animal kingdom, she unearths again layers of history that we have as a people, and as people.
“We CHANT. A ritualistic meditative call. We assimilate this earthly drama through pitches of reciting tones, shades and textures. Sacred attempts of setting a frequency for unlearning. breaking open. seeing. A mantra.”
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening participants at Festival Asalto 2020: 1. FAITH XLVIII 410 BC – 340 BC 2. Ozmo / “La visión de Tondalo” via Urban Art Field 3. SOFLES / Geometric
BSA Special Feature: FAITH XLVIII 410 BC – 340 BC
You knew FAITH XLVIII was OG, but did you imagine she dipped back to the 4th century? In this newly unveiled clandestine scene, the South African street artist paints among the decay in Lexington.
She says it is part of her “7.83Hz Series”
FAITH XLVIII 410 BC – 340 BC, Lexington, Kentucky
Ozmo / “La visión de Tondalo” via Urban Art Field
Ozmo in Turin finds inspiration here from a Renaissance panel from the Bosch school and interprets it for Urban Art Field. In it, we find the journey of a dreamer in hell beneath the power of the Mole Antonelliana, the major landmark building that serves as a symbol of Turin.
SOFLES / Geometric
Professor Sofles takes us to school again with this brand new 3D-style graffiti piece he painted in a gym. He says he took inspiration from the interior wall design and climbing equipment.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening participants at Festival Asalto 2020: 1. “BY VIRTUE OF” a collaboration project between Faith XLVII and Zane Mayer 2. Five Minutes with: 1UP Crew in Berlin – Via I LOVE GRAFFITI.DE 3. MadC1 Via Tost Films 4. Tiacuilos: A film by Federico Peixoto.
BSA Special Feature: “BY VIRTUE OF” a collaboration project between Faith XLVII and Zane Mayer
These hands first appeared projected on a 10 story building in Jacksonville, Florida. A compilation of hands filmed during interviews with America’s homeless, the collaborative video piece by Zane Meyer and Faith XLVII is instructive, expansive, colorful, genuine. Say the artists about the focus of this work, “Like books, the hands tell stories of what they have been through. Slow movements, delicate gestures, and subconscious motions make up the scenes of the film – a match is lit, stones are organized, tattoos are shown, sand is filtered. Clenched hands narrate stories of power, or anger, while open hands suggest an offering or a search for an embrace.”
“BY VIRTUE OF” a collaboration project between Faith XLVII and Zane Mayer
Five Minutes with: 1UP Crew in Berlin – Via I LOVE GRAFFITI.DE
Looks like 1UP Crew are up to no good, as usual. On a large scale, as usual. Impressive, as usual.
MadC1 Via Tost Films
A small taste of the stunning MadC painting her highest mural to date – 56 meters (184 feet) high – in Abu Dhabi for @forabudhabi – with a team from 7 different countries.
Tiacuilos: A film by Federico Peixoto.
As we have always done; here is an excellent opportunity to broaden the conversation about this world-wide people’s art movement that goes by many names. Tlacuilos: “The definitive film chronicle of Graffiti and Hip Hop in Central America”. A film by Federico Peixoto.
What is the real meaning of Liberté Égalité Fraternité?
Faith XLVII Liberté Égalité Fraternité
That’s a good question in the face of a new proposed law censoring French citizens free speech. According to the law, you would be criminalized for publishing any photo or video where a police officer or gendarme could be recognized if there is an intent to harm their “physical or psychological integrity”. Obviously this sounds like a vague restriction that could be widely interpreted and possibly abused.
Undoubtedly people see that individual freedoms are being steadily threatened by the state in many countries now, but France has explicitly fought for Liberté of the press. Since many people have a camera today – we are almost all the de facto “press” members who can hold civil servants and elected leaders accountable by self-publishing images and events for other citizens to see and discuss. It’s a right worth fighting for, if you ask the demonstrators in Paris right now.
The question as it pertains to the new print that Faith XLVII is selling right now is something slighty different, but still related – and still heroic on some level.
“The imagery of a rearing horse signifies a powerful animal which has been subjugated by humankind, and has finally broken free. Carrying with it the weight of nationalism and patriotism, memorials and statues of statesmen and war ‘heroes,'” she says.
“Historically, they were the creatures men took to war, to fight and die alongside them with unrelenting loyalty. Inescapably majestic and elegant in their powerful and muscular form, horses have an inherent sense of nobility,” says the street artist and fine artist in a statement accompanying the print release.
“Within this discrepancy between their physical power and their subservience, they become archetypal symbols for notions of human power struggles, war, nationalism and blind loyalty to leadership. By unleashing or freeing these dignified creatures through these images, we understand our own sense of agency, independent from political quests, ultimately expressing potentiality for our own humane power.”
LIBERTÉ ÉGALITÉ FRATERNITÉ II 6 layer Stone Lithograph Printed on Japanese Udagami Paper 70g 78 cm x 109 cm / 30.71 inches x 42.91 inches Edition of 60
A percentage of all sales will be donated to The South African Cart Horse Protection Association, who have have been providing vital services and education to the cart horse owners since 1995, including a clinic, treatment stalls and paddocks, cart repair workshop, education and training providing services to over 260 working overworked or abused cart horses and their owners.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. “Strength” from Pejac 2. Chant – Faith XVII 3. Spells, The Salton Sea – Faith XLVII 4. EDOARDO TRESOLDI, An Interview
BSA Special Feature: “Strength” from Pejac
Santander, Spain has suffered from COVID, of course, as has most of the country. Local street artist PEJAC says he wanted to contribute to his local hospital, the University Hospital Marqués de Valdecilla, by painting in public areas for people to enjoy. He says the common theme that unites the three distinctly different styles he used, is Strength.
“It’s a gesture of gratitude to the heath workers of Valdecilla, for their work in general and during this Covid crisis in particular,” says PEJAC
PEJAC / STRENGTH
FAITH XLVII / CHANT
Reliably enigmatic, street artist Faith XVII is using the medium of video to add impressions and associations to her works here on a text series called “Chant”. The irony of using the letter C that may call to mind Chase bank is drawn tighter as you see neighborhoods and walls probably redlined by corporate banks, or targeted for annihilation through neglect. In the context of our older societies, one may see in her work the power of chanting to focus a larger group to act in union with purpose, and power.
SPELLS / SALTON SEA / FAITH XLVII
60 miles south of Palm Springs, California, the Saltan Sea is disappearing, it’s shore moving miles in only a couple of decades, along with its population. Faith XVII is a Californian these days and she is here pondering the “beach” that remains, full of mercury, arsenic, selenium. California’s largest inland body of water now turns into dust, and Faith pours herself into the soil and the air that carries it; and the drought, well… How this translates to her art on the street or in the studio, it is in alignment with her ongoing concerns about climate change – and you can be sure this project will appear again in her work.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. “Realm: Shanghai” Vhils directed by Jose Pando Lucas 2. ARTRIUM, Moscow. (part 1) 3. Faith XVLII x Philadelphia, ‘The Silent Watcher’.
BSA Special Feature: “Realm: Shanghai” Vhils directed by Jose Pando Lucas
Like other fashion and luxury brands, certain contemporary art galleries are commissioning higher-end film quality videos to put muscle behind the marketing. Naturally, some artwork is camera-ready, infused with the potential for storytelling that creates the “rich content” that social media thrives on, and aids sales teams in the gallery space and at art fairs. Portuguese Street Artist Vhils has director Jose Pando Lucas along as sophisticated seer; The artist once again bringing a storyline into savvy focus, capturing your imagination with his.
“I remember the story I was told,” intones the mystical
modern while staring into the camera. “That in time I would know my place in
this world.”
The tone is perhaps meant to reassure an unsteady heart in a chaotic modern world, to center oneself in a dislocating environment. Viewed as an appealing sales tool, it also skillfully fortifies a self-image of the entitled powerful class who are pre-ordained or chosen to dominate and to lead. Anonymous and existential mournful stares through city windows and at bus stops, the artworks under construction are born of destruction; mottled, rough-hewn, defiant in the city’s margins.
Tradition struggles for its place amidst amazing new technology and rapidly growing infrastructure. The artist posits himself as working man pounding on walls, without airs of class. With this art in your home you are keeping in touch with the common, the everyday insecurities, for you are citizen. You can afford it because, after all, you are also a ruler.
“Nobody really got the answers they longed for.”
“Do we live as we dream?”
“Who else can hear me right now?”
Youthful, fashionable, under constraint, free of constraint,
traditional and unconventional power players laying plans quietly, focusing a pent-up
hunger for more. This is the ocean of wealth and capacity that will define
epochs, not decades.
It ends sweetly, a bon mot that suggests a sense of human camaraderie among competitors of this race. But it is an uncertain connection, born more of wistful desire for a pleasant resolution than actual brotherhood or sisterhood.
“Yesterday is gone. This moment has ended.”
VHILS – REALM (Shanghai, 2019) A film by Jose Pando Lucas
ARTRIUM, Moscow. (part 1)
An educational insight into the people and the place.
Unusual in the Russian Federation, if not the commercialized western cultures which have willfully merged graffiti and Street Art culture to the point of quotidian, The Artrium combines a shopping mall with murals by Street Artists. What is remarkable is the list of names who regale this city skin with new pieces inside and outside, bringing to life an otherwise normal grey and beige block.
Astounding to discover in the center of Moscow, the outdoor gallery boasts artists such as Shepard Fairey, Felipe Pantone, Tristan Eaton, Ben Eine, PichiAvo, Okuda San Miguel, Pokras Lampas, Faith47, WK Interact, Faust, and Haculla. Average visitors may not grasp the remarkable collection of talents, but if you are shopping in this capital city, you wouldn’t want to miss this opportunity that captures a stunning moment in the rotation of the Street Art universe.
Faith XVLII x Philadelphia, ‘The Silent Watcher’. By Chop ’em Down Films
In the words of Faith XLVII;
‘I come from a country that is seething with the frustration of
uncontrollable violence and woman abuse, xenophobia , class and racial
divide.
And have moved to a country where there seems to be a fundamental crisis in the very soul of the nation.
We know this ache of our lands.
And we all know personal ache.
Everybody has their struggle to bear.
And with the weight of the world on our shoulders,
we must still be able to live with empathy
We must somehow keep our hearts open.
The words on this wall are a reference to the City Seal of Philadelphia with calls out for brotherly love.
This is no small commitment.
It also references a quote ‘Optimism is a strategy for a Better Future.’
Paying tribute to Noam Chomsky who was born in Philadelphia and is 91 years old this year. .
The harsh experiences of life can easily make us fall into a negative world view,
or inner psychological depression.
But we each have the ability to transform this base metal of knowing suffering,
into the gold of higher aspiration.
The name of this mural is ‘The Silent Watcher’
We can be the silent watcher, who knows, who loves and who endures.’
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
